


Rocky Mountain Search and Rescue

by gwyllion



Category: Brokeback Mountain (2005)
Genre: Asexual Character, Child Abuse, F/M, M/M, NaNoWriMo, Religious Conflict, Unreliable Narrator
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-23
Updated: 2013-04-21
Packaged: 2017-12-06 06:09:02
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 16
Words: 60,568
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/732308
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gwyllion/pseuds/gwyllion
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ennis and Jack thought they had seen the last of each other when they parted ways on a windy day in Signal.  They were wrong.  Some people thought Alma would have remarried after her divorce.  They were wrong, too.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Andy](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Andy/gifts).



_The whip-poor-will’s call and the laughing owl’s song are calling me back to the hills_

May 6, 1968

They say your whole life flashes before your eyes when you are confronted with imminent death.

Davis Wentworth heard his shoulder crunch when it hit the rocks. His body went airborne for what seemed like a long minute. He convulsed from the jolt of bone on frozen rocks before he smashed onto ice again. This particular rotation of limbs and tangle of climbing rope caused him to crash with his right hip, before continuing to slide.

Pain blazed through him like an inferno.

They say your whole life flashes before your eyes at times like this. Davis Wentworth would agree. His reptilian brain took over his ability to control his thoughts. He had no choice in the matter. He had been sliding down the icy slope like a penguin speeding to the bottom of an iceberg, only the soft landing in freezing water wasn’t there to greet him. Hell, he hadn’t seen the band of rocks that smashed his bones and tore the wool of his pants to shreds, and now he didn’t know what was at the end of this ride.

It had been a routine climb.

He almost laughed to himself as he envisioned how the story about two seasoned mountaineers who met with tragedy atop Colorado’s highest peak might look in the Denver Post. In a split second, he wondered whether his partner would be able to make the trek back to the car. How far would he have to drive to find a payphone from which he could call for help. Who would be dispatched? Would he be an embarrassment to his family for pursuing an activity that they thought dangerous? And this wasn’t even one of the more challenging peaks. It was a routine climb, mostly. Except for the fact that one minute he was sitting on his ass, cautiously plotting his way to the bottom of the snowfield, and in the next minute he was picking up speed and losing control.

His feet scrambled for purchase against the icy slope. If only he could turn himself around and face the mountain, he was sure he could plant the point of his ice axe into the frozen snow and grip the handle tightly enough to stop his headlong fall. He imagined the welcome sound of the metal point digging into the ice, sending a spray of crystalline chips over his goggles.

It was no use.

He slid too fast, and had lost the use of one arm. Racing down the ice, he could only hope to stop when the terrain smoothed out at the end of the slope. 

Time moved in slow motion. The faces of his loved ones appeared in frozen frames before his closed eyes. Regrets surfaced. He worried about the words that might remain unspoken. Although he wished for it, there was no way to climb back up that mountain, no way to turn back time, and no way to take back the actions he had already completed. He would have to deal with the consequences, or maybe he would never have to deal with anything ever again.

~~~

A gusty wind swept across the lakes, buffeting the solid log cabin. Ennis Del Mar drained his coffee mug and threw another log into the woodstove. The light from the fire cast an amber glow on the smooth curves of the walls, the radiance joining the flame from the single kerosene lamp on his table, bathing the room in soft light. The small Forest Service cabin that served as his temporary home was still warm from the stove that he had stoked to excess late the previous afternoon when Owen Flaherty showed up on his doorstep. Pounding on the door with frostbitten hands, frantically shouting for help, Flaherty was lucky to have made it to the cabin at the trailhead before nightfall. He tumbled into the cabin, his glasses steaming with condensation from the sudden exposure to heat.

Flaherty and his climbing partner, Davis Wentworth, had been making their descent after successfully summiting Mt. Elbert when Davis took a bad fall. Owen panted out his story while Ennis stripped off his wet clothing and tended to his immediate needs. Owen told him once he saw his climbing partner fall, he managed to descend a thousand feet to where Davis had landed in a crumpled heap. Owen did his best to wrap him in a sleeping bag, padding him with extra clothes before he went for help.

The snow began soon after Owen departed. When he finally arrived at Ennis’s cabin, he was dehydrated and exhausted from his long hike in the severe winter conditions. The unexpected snowstorm had caught everyone off guard. Ennis prepared a mug of hot chocolate for Owen, adding a shot of whiskey—the best way Ennis knew to warm a body’s hypothermic core.

Ennis radioed the main headquarters in Twin Lakes, five miles away via FR 125, a rutted old logging road. He sat with Owen by the fire until the Jeep arrived with Jeff Millis, a paramedic by trade, but also the Rocky Mountain Search and Rescue crew chief who was in charge of mountaineering rescues in this neck of the woods. The brawny medic stripped off his parka, opting to work at Ennis’s table in only his forest green T-shirt. His dark eyes shifted from his notebook to Owen as he recorded what had happened so he could begin to orchestrate Davis’s rescue.

Owen repeated his story, battling difficult emotions. For some reason, he and his partner had been separated on their descent. Davis decided to slide down a seemingly open slope with hopes of intercepting the snowshoe track of their approach trail—four-thousand feet below. He removed his crampons, so they wouldn’t catch in the snow. He slid slowly at first, digging in with his ice axe, staying stable, but he soon hit a patch of hardened ice and picked up speed. Davis never realized he was headed for an unseen band of bare rocks, masked from his view by an overhanging crown of snow. He slid out of control, smashing through the snowbank, striking the rocks and bouncing like a rag doll before sliding to a stop at the end of a long wide slope.

When Jeff finished questioning Owen, drawing lines and writing notes on a tattered map, he took Ennis aside. “Sounds bad, dislocated shoulder, dislocated hip, possible head injury,” he said in a low voice.

“You think he’s still alive?” Ennis questioned softly, looking over his shoulder with concern to make sure Owen didn’t overhear.

“We’re going to have a hell of a day tomorrow trying to figure that out, Ennis. Be ready to go at first light.”

He slapped Ennis on the back and drove Owen back to the Twin Lakes headquarters. He had plenty of phone calls to make.

Ennis stared out the window into the early dawn. As a Ranger, most of his days were spent in quiet solitude, just the way he liked them. Some days, however, provided a sense of purpose that almost made his lonely life seem worthwhile. As he prepared for the rest of the RMSAR team’s arrival at his cabin, he hoped that they would find Davis alive. He hated to think of what it would be like trying to survive those injuries alone in the dark on a remote mountainside. With the only available help many miles away and a storm moving in, Ennis figured that Davis couldn’t even be sure that Owen got off the mountain to find help. The uncertainly of it all must be agonizing. To make matters worse, the unanticipated spring storm had intensified overnight and threatened to halt the rescue effort before it started.

It was going to be a long day.

In his four years with the Forest Service, Ennis had yet to see a climber survive a fall like the one described to him last night. Chances were, if the trauma from the dislocations didn’t kill Wentworth, the hypothermia would.

~~~

Jack Twist rocked his hips back and forth, his left side warm with the friction from rubbing against the coarse sheets. Wrapped securely in his lover’s arms, his body nestled into his favorite place on earth. A mountain wind howled across the ridge and down the valley, bringing snow in its wake. Oblivious to the weather outside, Jack lost himself in the sensuous spooning, his smooth back against Ennis’s chest, his hands gripping the pillow tight. The rapidly increasing beat of Ennis’s heart matched his own perfectly as they flowed toward the brink together, skin glistening with warm sweat, despite the cold snow piling up only inches from where they lay.

He moaned deeply and pressed his head into Ennis’s shoulder, exposing his neck for the lips and tongue that urgently sucked and licked at his vulnerable flesh, an empty canvas for Ennis’s gentle bites, a palate for his wet kisses. He craved the sound of Ennis’s hot whispers in his ear, the way his strong rough hands felt as they stroked the length of his naked torso, the way Ennis knew just how Jack’s body responded to his touch.

“Oh God, Ennis….”

Somewhere outside a sheep bleated loudly.

“Yes, yes, yes…”

The insistent bleating moved closer to the tent.

“Yes, Ennis, yes…”

The sheep was beyond annoying now, bleating louder than ever. What the hell was its problem?

“Yes! …oh fuck!” Jack was startled awake by the sound of the telephone. As he opened his eyes, he realized that there was no tent, no sheep, and sadly, no Ennis. He was alone, and whoever was calling wouldn’t give up.

“Jack Twist here,” he said, picking up the receiver midway through another ring.

“Twist, there’s been an accident,” the voice alerted him. “We’re gonna need you to fly the chopper over to Twin Lakes at daybreak so you’re in position for a possible rescue.”

“Uh… what time is it now?” Jack asked groggily.

“Four a.m. pal, not that it should matter, since you knew you’d be on call when you took this job,” the voice laughed.

“Ha, ha, very funny, boss. I’m on my way.”

“See you in a bit. Oh, and by the way, drive carefully, it’s been snowing all night and the roads are a bitch.”

“Shit,” Jack said, hanging up the phone and rubbing the sleep out of his eyes.

He pushed the covers off and threw his legs over the side of the bed, his hand landing in the sticky mess on the sheets. _What the hell? Just like a goddamn teenager_. He brought his hand to his face and smiled, remembering the dream he was enjoying when he was awakened by Wayne’s call.

“Ennis,” he whispered, shaking his head.

Nearly five long years had passed since he watched the quiet cowboy fade from his view. Ennis disappeared into the nondescript side streets of Signal, Wyoming that windy day, when snowflakes and a stray punch threatened to obscure the pleasant memories of the summer they had just spent together. Jack hadn’t dreamed of Ennis Del Mar in a long while, although he thought about him nearly every day. He wished he could go back to sleep, to fall back into his _Ennis dream_ again, but he knew too well that the dream wouldn’t come if he tried to force it back into his mind.

Without time for a shower, Jack stepped out of his bunkroom. Since he had arrived in Colorado with only the shirt on his back and a couple hundred dollars to spend from his Army discharge, he immediately turned on the Twist charm to score himself free room and board at the old Salida Forest Service headquarters. Wayne Dean, the head of Rocky Mountain Search and Rescue had been around long enough that he could make things happen.

Although RMSAR was a volunteer organization, Wayne’s many years with the Forest Service earned him the right to get what he needed, no questions asked. He was so grateful finally to find someone capable of flying the cast-off Army helicopter, that he befriended Jack right away and would do whatever was necessary to get him on the Forest Service payroll.

For Jack, the accommodations were just one of the job’s perks. Even though the place hadn’t been used in a few years, there was running water, a telephone, and electricity- all government oversights, no doubt. The rustic wooden-framed building was sure to be more luxurious than some of the places Jack expected to stay when he was assigned a summer position in the forest.

Jack padded barefoot through the common area, its fireplace still giving off heat. In the bathroom, he took a piss and ran hot water into the sink. He washed himself off quickly with a wet rag, splashed some water on his face, brushed his teeth, and returned to the bunkroom to dress in his uniform.

 _Looking good there, Twist_ , he thought to himself as he caught a glimpse of the mirror. He pulled a soft white cotton T-shirt over his head and topped it with the stiff button-down shirt of the United States Forest Service, too new to have his name sewn on the breast pocket yet.

 _I can’t imagine what Ennis would say about this—working for the same organization that we were avoiding while herding them sheep._ He laughed to himself, running a comb through his dark hair before zipping up his pants and fastening his belt. He nodded to his reflection, the sparkle in his blue eyes revitalized now that he had something to look forward to, both the upcoming airlift, and freshly unearthed memories of Ennis that would help him pass the time. Wayne had warned him when he started that these kinds of rescues were mostly a lot of _hurry up and wait._

Grabbing his olive green USFS issued parka, winter gloves and hat, he rummaged through the closet for his rucksack. He stuffed a few necessities into the bag, just in case he didn’t make it back to Salida later in the day. He wasn’t quite sure what might happen during a rescue attempt, seeing this was his first time out. In the entryway to the cabin, he sat on a bench, pulled on his heavy winter boots, stamping his feet down into their padded warmth, and headed out to the truck. He hoped that Wayne had coffee brewing.

~~~


	2. Chapter 2

_To the best place of all where I know I belong, where the water falls, tumbles, and spills_

Alma woke when the door slammed shut. Her eyes blinked open and adjusted to the early morning light that drifted through the slats of the Venetian blinds. In the driveway, the engine of the family car roared to life, disturbing the quiet Sunday morning in Riverton.

Alma wished that her mother would have woken her before the family left for breakfast, but it was too much for her to hope.

Sunday morning breakfast at Miller’s Coffee Shop before church was a Beers family tradition that began when Alma was young. As the matriarch of the family, Ann Beers had always dressed her daughters in their Sunday best for the breakfast gathering . The Beers girls always matched, Ava’s dress a miniature version of Alma’s, despite their six year age difference. There at Miller’s, the girls would dip triangles of toast into the gooey yellow yolks under their mother’s watchful eye while their father perused the Sunday paper. A typical Riverton family, they had spent Sunday mornings this way for as long as any member of the Beers family could remember.

Alma pulled the covers off and sat up in bed, that mattress creaking as she moved. She shoved her feet into the worn slippers that she had dug out of a cardboard box the night before and wandered into the kitchen in search of coffee.

Alma supposed she was lucky that her parents let her spend the night in their home at all. Her mother expected her to set a good example for Ava, and they didn’t mask their disappointment that Alma had failed in her primary duty as an older sibling. Alma had fought for long years to fulfill that expectation in her mother’s eyes, but her efforts failed. Like snow melting in a sunny field, the intent was there, but it never managed to stick.

It didn’t take long for Alma to search through the familiar pantry to find what she was looking for. The door to the cupboard closet creaked when she opened it. The high-pitched whine seemed more insistent than it had in her childhood. Alma averted her eyes from the splintered wooden paddleboard that hung inside the door. Instead, she concentrated on unscrewing the lid from the jar of Sanka, dropping two teaspoons of the granules into her porcelain cup. She stood at the sink while the water ran from the tap. When the steam rose from the faucet, she tested the heat with a flick of her finger.

She glanced at the boxes that were stacked in the hallway, the clutter that her mother couldn’t wait to have out of her way, permitting its presence for only one night while Alma found new accommodations. Left jobless and homeless by an electrical short that set her apartment and workplace on fire, Alma had pushed dimes into the slot of a payphone outside the smoldering Riverton Laundromat until she found someone who would help her put a roof over her head. She packed her possessions as quickly as she could while her landlord looked on. She carted them to her parents’ house in the back of a taxi. The stacks of tattered cardboard boxes undoubtedly interfered with the image of her daughter that Ann had cultivated over the years. Instead of growing bright with promise, the image had tarnished and dulled like an old mirror with a cast of gray behind the glass.

Alma’s shoulders tightened as if they could cage her beating heart that threatened to melt and seep out from between her ribs.

K.E. and Laurie would be there in less than an hour.

~~~

The Rocky Mountains divide the western part of America in two. From Antelope Wells on the Mexican border to Montana’s Glacier National Park, the peaks of the Rockies form a barrier that can only be crossed through an occasional low pass, a break in the unrelenting terrain. The peaks rise like the spine of a book that has been forgotten and left facedown to be picked up and discovered another day.

For millions of years, the mountains rose from beneath their shallow sea, forced by the laramide orogeny before they were sculpted out of stone and earth by glaciers that came and retreated with the ice age. The melting seepage parted high on the divide, where their flow made a choice for the Atlantic or the Pacific. The life-giving water gushed into strong rivers that fertilized the valleys with till. The enriched soil hosted a wealth of minerals and a feast of vegetation on which fur-bearing animals could feed.

Only thousands of years later, did the humans inhabit the valleys at the foot of the range.

First the Indians, then the explorers came, Coronado, MacKenzie, Lewis and Clark—setting out from the civilized east to discover a fortune in the west. They crossed the great continental divide and traveled the western side of the overturned book to the Pacific. Then, the modern day explorers came, those who used the mountains and peaks for recreation to escape their workday lives, their pain at the loss of dear ones, and the shadow of war. The passes are crossed more frequently nowadays, by those who seek to write their story upon the pages, and by those who venture beyond the barriers of ancient geography.

The range is narrower than it is long, going from a mere seventy miles wide in some areas, to more than three hundred miles where the range spreads open in broad plateaus rimmed with peaks on their horizon. So rises Colorado’s Front Range, the uplifted crust of the planet between New Mexico and Wyoming. The settlements made there in the age of discovery grew into cities. Pueblo, Colorado Springs, Denver, Boulder, and Fort Collins provided job opportunities and homes for those who chose to dwell in the shadow of the mountains to the east of the book’s spine. The residents would write their tales and leave their footprints on the peaks that rose from flat plains.

Mt. Elbert, the highest peak in the Rocky Mountains, drew those who sought solitude and those who would challenge its flanks. As the population grew in Colorado, so did the numbers of modern day adventurers and the land managers who would keep them in check, Forest Rangers who sought to protect the forest from the interests that would decimate the land’s wealth by stealing her minerals, harvesting her trees, or destroying the landscape in an inferno caused by a single match.

The forest was wise unto herself. She had the power to regenerate and regrow, but with man’s influence, her resilience dwindled, and her confidence wilted.

~~~

Snow was still falling in huge wet flakes when Jeff arrived at Ennis’s backcountry cabin an hour after sunrise, along with Dana and Ken from Twin Lakes, and a half dozen RMSAR volunteers from surrounding forest divisions. Their vehicles had made it down the unpaved road to within a mile of the trailhead before the snow became too deep to negotiate. The men had to use snowshoes to travel the rest of the way. They walked single file, taking turns in the lead as they beat down a narrow trough in two feet of fresh snow on their way to the cabin. Ennis greeted the team members, donned his winter gear, and joined the line as they snaked around the back of his home and started moving up the trail. 

Each member of the team carried their own personal gear, food, and extra clothing, in addition to pieces of equipment for the rescue. The extra gear, including rope and a rescue toboggan, seemed much heavier as the team began to ascend in earnest. Their progress was slow in the poor visibility, and as they gained elevation and reached the open expanse of the upper mountain where trees could not grow because of the harsh conditions, a sense of wariness about triggering avalanches washed over the team. Although each man performed his task as if the victim were still alive, no one really believed Davis had survived the night. 

Eventually, Ennis rotated to the lead position in the line. He gazed through his fogged goggles. There were no colors visible, except the incessant white of the surrounding landscape. He planted his right snowshoe and sunk into the deep untracked snow as he brought his left foot up, sending loose powder flying into the air. Stepping with his left foot, he brought his right foot into the air, before plunging into the snow again. He continued along in this manner, one step at a time, until he was exhausted and had to step aside and relinquish the lead spot. 

Ennis retreated to the side of the trail, gasping for breath, and Dana who trudged behind him, took the lead. When all the men had passed Ennis, he joined the end of the line again. They traveled this way for hours, the most difficult lead position rotating through the men. 

“How ya doin’ there, Ennis?” asked Jeff when they traded off, his strawberry blonde hair escaping his hat’s hem, the only way Ennis could identify Jeff as the rescuer. 

“Not too bad,” Ennis replied. 

“Looks like the weather might break soon and we’ll get some visibility,” said Jeff.

“Not a moment too soon,” Ennis said, sensing the white sky lightening through his goggles.

“What do ya think about you and me handin’ off the gear to the others so we can strike out faster?” Jeff asked.

“I’m up for it, if you are,” Ennis replied.

“Ok bud, we’ll see what Mother Nature has in mind,” Jeff said as he retreated to the back of the line.

Ennis respected Jeff’s no-nonsense attitude. He was good at prioritizing what needed to be done, taking care of the problem and worrying about whose toes he stepped on later. For this reason alone, he was one of Ennis’s few friends. Jeff and his wife were among the handful of people who made an effort to visit Ennis when he was stationed in the backcountry. _What do ya expect, Del Mar? Gonna have a goddamn pot luck with a house full a company when yer livin out in the middle a nowhere yer whole life? Not likely._

It was no secret that Jeff had a deep respect for Ennis and his desire for solitude. Ennis had made it clear that if there was one man to staff a remote firetower or live in an outpost miles from the nearest road, it was him. Over the years, Ennis had proven that he was intelligent enough to make the right decisions, and he was level headed enough not to mind living like a hermit for most of the year.

Jeff was used to dealing with employees who burned out after a short stint in the field. He’d have to reassign them to a position at the main headquarters, where they could interact with the public on most days.

An employee like Ennis only came around once in a career. Jeff assumed that Ennis’s divorce must have hit him hard.

~~~


	3. Chapter 3

_In my innermost dreams is the sigh of the pines and the soft siren song of the trails_

Although the new Salida headquarters was only two miles away, it took Jack the better part of a half-hour to negotiate the snow-drifted roads. He was thankful that the truck had a plow and chains so he could manage driving in the spring snowstorm. The barely-visible mountains towered over each side of the road, their snowy heights masked by the windblown precipitation, the desolate road lit only by the headlights of the old forestry truck. As Jack sent a white spray of new snow onto the embankments with the plow, he remembered his dream and wondered if Ennis Del Mar ever thought about him. 

_Probably happily married with a couple a kids by now. Not much sense in dreamin’ about what can never be._ He rubbed his left cheek, remembering the sting of pain that he felt after Ennis had decked him years ago, but he replaced his hand on the steering wheel and smiled when he thought back to the memory of Ennis’s warm eyes, his deep friendly voice, and the nights spent far from the sheep they were supposed to be tending. He wondered if he would ever see Ennis again. In a way, he hoped not. The sight of Ennis married to that ranch gal might break Jack’s heart for good. Still, now that he was back in the country, and only one state away, he figured he might get up the nerve to pay Ennis a visit in Riverton some day, to see how it all turned out for him. To see if he was happy, at least. 

“Hey, nice of you to join us,” Wayne said, when Jack appeared in the mess hall. 

“I hope you got some coffee fer me,” smiled Jack, punching Wayne good-naturedly on the shoulder.

“We got a whole pot with your name on it. You better be plenty awake flyin’ in this shit, son.”

“Hey, this ain’t nothin’, compared to some of what I’ve seen,” remarked Jack as he poured himself a steaming mug of caffeinated goodness. He didn’t let on that he had never flown a helicopter in a snowstorm before. But he was never one to complain about a challenge. In fact there weren’t too many things that Jack Twist wouldn’t try at least once. 

“I’d like to hear some of yer war stories someday, but right now, we got to get you up to Twin Lakes. Let’s go see what’s goin’ on.”

Wayne pulled a knit woolen cap over his thinning hair and shuffled across the concrete floor to the hangar. The half-dozen staff members and volunteers at the Salida Ranger Station were full of nervous energy. While the chopper was shoveled out and brushed off, Wayne debriefed Jack about the incident. The stranded mountaineer was alive the last time he was seen by his climbing partner, but he was suffering from multiple injuries from a bad fall on the mountain. The Twin Lakes Ranger Station, an hour north of Salida, featured more SAR manpower and closer proximity to the southeast slopes of Mt. Elbert, where the accident occurred.

Snow had been falling since late yesterday afternoon, but because the subject was last reported alive, Twin Lakes SAR teams had been assembled overnight and divided into groups, ready to start their mission as soon as the weather conditions improved. As a helicopter pilot, Jack’s first task was to move the chopper from Salida to the base at Twin Lakes, so it would be in a better position for a rescue. Then, he would fly in for the evacuation. Jack sipped his coffee while the chopper was fueled. He knew there was still a slight possibility that the injured climber would walk out of the woods on his own. If the team got the word that SAR wasn’t needed, Jack thought he’d head back to his private bunkroom to catch up on sleep. Maybe he’d even be able to stir up the Ennis-dream that ended so abruptly this morning.

~~~

Alma rinsed her cup in the sink after she had swallowed the last mouthful of instant coffee. She gazed out the window as morning broke across the neighborhood where she grew up. Her stomach grumbled for lack of food. She would have gone to church with her parents and sister if they had invited her, but her mother had made it clear—there was no place in the church for Alma now, and no place in the family to which she had brought shame.

No woman in the Beers family had ever been divorced. Marriage was something to be endured at all costs. Not even a slap to the face or a husband’s drunken rampage should make a woman break her marital promises. The promises Alma had broken did more damage to the already strained relationship between mother and daughter. Alma remembered the day she called to ask if she could move back to her family home, leaving her newlywed husband behind. Her mother was furious at the scar Alma’s divorce would leave on her family.

“No,” Ann had said without hesitation. “I don’t think that’s a very good idea.”

“But I have no place else to stay,” Alma had pleaded, twisting the spiraled telephone cord between her nervous fingers. She silently prayed that one of the jobs she had applied for during the past week would come through with an offer of employment. 

Without a job, she had no prospects for her future, unless she stayed with Ennis and had his babies. The children would secure her success as a wife and turn the tide of her mother’s feelings in her favor. But fate had dealt her a difficult hand and a houseful of little Del Mars was not to be.

“You should have thought of that before you decided to get a divorce,” Ann had said. “You need to think of Ava. It’s up to you to set a good example for your sister.”

Alma sighed. Four years after the divorce, Ann still insisted that Alma needed to think of Ava.

She wanted to protest that Ava was eighteen years old now, but pointing out the age difference had never served Alma well in the past. The six years that separated the girls went unregistered in her mother’s mind.

Alma suspected that her mother fretted about what to tell the neighbors when they noticed Alma had returned to the family home in Riverton. The fear of humiliation was always paramount in Ann’s eyes. The Riverton community wouldn’t receive a divorcee with open arms. It was best that they didn’t know about Alma’s failure.

Alma wiped the cup dry and opened the door to the pantry closet to return the cup and the Sanka to its place. The familiar squeak of the hinges whined. The wooden paddle swung back and forth like a pendulum.

Alma set the cup down and reached for the paddle, her fingers stopping its momentum. The handle was worn smooth from use, although she doubted that Ava’s backside had ever felt the sting of splintered wood on her bare rump.

She caressed a finger over the wooden surface and turned her head toward the bathroom, the room where punishment had often been often doled out by her mother. Nothing much had changed in the years that Alma had spent away from the family home. The bathroom floor was still covered with the same linoleum, veins of gold across a white background. It was supposed to resemble marble, Alma guessed, although no one she knew had ever seen a marble floor, except in the movies.

Before she realized what she was doing, Alma stood in the bathroom. It was as if her feet had taken the steps there of their own accord. She shoved her underwear down and sat to pee, the memories of one particular beating flooding back to her as she sat on the cold toilet seat to empty her bladder. Most of her childhood punishments blended together, but one stood out as particularly shameful because of what she had been caught doing.

Her face bloomed with embarrassment as she reached for the toilet paper, wiped, and flushed.

She must have been four or five years old. It had been some time before Ava was born, because after Ava’s birth, Alma never would have dared to do anything that her younger sister might repeat. There would be hell to pay if Ava followed in Alma’s footsteps.

Alma’s mother had warned her countless times about the transgressions that would mark her as a sinner. She ranted long and loud about the fires of hell, whenever Alma misbehaved or violated the rules of the Beers’ house. Alma knew she mustn’t ever give her mother a reason to think that she was a sinful daughter.

But it was a sin indeed that Alma had committed in the bathroom that day.

She remembered her shock when she saw the doorknob turning, her mother opening the bathroom door. Even at her tender age, Alma should have understood that her mother respected no privacy between them. Alma supposed it was because Ann had grown up with seven sisters, each of them married before their twentieth birthday. Alma tapped her fingers on her thighs, counting each of her aunts off, using the digits of both hands to mark each woman. None of the women had ever come close to getting divorced… unlike Alma. Ann’s relationship with her sisters surely cemented her image of Alma as a sinful eldest daughter.

But that distant day in the bathroom, Alma had taken care to lock the door, hadn’t she? She hadn’t heard her mother’s footsteps as she approached the doorway. In hindsight, Alma imagined the element of surprise must have rung as a sweet victory for Ann who relished the triumph of catching her daughter engaged in sin. It would prove that she would burn in hell, something Ann had threatened Alma with ever since she could remember. The doorknob that Alma thought she had locked had turned under her mother’s hand.

The door had creaked open, but Alma hadn’t heard it above the sound of her mother’s gasp as she gaped in horror over what Alma was doing.

Twenty years later, Alma remembered what incited her mother’s rage. She had sat on the toilet and used a Q-Tip to prod and poke at herself, feeling the sensation as the puffy white head of the Q-Tip slipped into a dark orifice. Surely the use of a Q-Tip was less taboo than her fingers which Ann expressly forbade, but no, it made no difference to Ann. Alma remembered that the experimentation was such a violation of her own body that it warranted a beating from the paddle and the promise that Ann would tell Alma’s father about her filthy sin when he returned home from work.

Alma stiffened and wrapped her arms around herself. She held the memory of her mother’s voice berating her, shouting about what a sinful little girl Alma had been. What would her father say when he returned home? Did he not do enough for his family that he shouldn’t have to worry about having a daughter who would touch herself in such a manner?

Alma had tried to escape what she had done, but it was too late. Her mother had already seen the Q-Tips and cotton balls that she had used to penetrate herself dabbed with shit and blood. Kicking them aside and trying to shove them under the radiator hadn’t been enough to hide them from her mother’s eyes. Nor had it been enough to protect Alma from the beating she got with the paddleboard, each of her mother’s words accented with a strike so hard that she wasn’t able to sit for days.

Ann’s message had come across loud and clear.

Alma had cowered in the corner of her bedroom, certain that she had learned her lesson. She would never touch herself again because that was something evil that only a sinful little girl would do. Her mother convinced her that she would go straight to hell for it. Alma cried in hopes that her mother would forget the act she had committed. She prayed to baby Jesus that her mother wouldn’t tell her father what she had done.

The shame welled inside of her.

Alma feared little more than burning in hell. When her family attended church each Sunday, she was reminded of what the fires would feel like as they singed her skin. The fire and brimstone crowd never wavered from their beliefs that sinners needed to be punished. At the front of the church, behind the pulpit, an elaborate painting served as a reminder each week of the fate that awaited the sinners. The Archangel Michael, with his spear gripped between his strong hands, cast Satan into the fiery pit of hell. He stabbed at Satan’s bare skin, the color of mashed peas. The flames licked up to consume Satan, the spear plunging into his other-worldly flesh, his wings beating furiously in the air, fanning the flames further.

There was no escape for him. And there was no escape for Alma. This is what it would feel like, if Alma sinned again. This, her mother assured her, would be her fate.

Such was Ann’s rage that Alma was convinced that no one, not a single living Christian man, woman, or child had ever done what Alma did. Her mother was deeply angered by it, and surely Alma’s father would be too.

For long weeks and months, Alma waited for her father to punish her. Surely after her mother’s tirade about sin and Alma’s sore behind, her mother had spoken to her father to let him know that their daughter would not be joining them in the kingdom of heaven. She had committed this most heinous of sins and now there would be no sweet Jesus to lead Alma, and there would be no baby lambs, just the sheep’s white wool covered in blood and shit like the Q-tips had been. Alma prayed every day that her mother had decided not to tell her father. She prayed every day that Jesus would forgive her. She swore that she would never touch herself again.

And she never did.

The car horn startled Alma from her reverie.

K.E. and Laurie had arrived.

Alma turned away from the bathroom and greeted them at the front door.

~~~

A… B… C…

A first responder to any accident, in the wilderness or in the city, knows the importance of these three letters. They can mean the difference between life and death for their patient who depends on the medic’s knowledge to survive. Will the victim lie there unconscious until he expires? Or will some kind soul be able to administer aid for his distress?

A human life teeters on the edge.

Airway.

Breathing.

Circulation.

In an urban environment, anomalies with these functions are easy to treat. When an issue arises with any of the three, help is available immediately, or at worst, after a short ride to the hospital. Ambulance optional.

Most ordinary citizens would be surprised to learn that there are more letters to the initial ABC sequence.

D… stands for disability. What is the extent of the injury that a first responder confronts? If the victim is bleeding to death, this is the next life-threatening situation to address. A medic wouldn’t want all that good circulation going to waste. He wisely takes steps to staunch the flow and to bring the patient’s functions back to normal.

In the winter woodlands of the Rocky Mountain range, and in every other mountain range on earth where snow falls and winter winds blow, there is another letter to add to the list of concerns that affect a victim. While the flakes of snow fall from the sky, while the river transforms into a frozen waterfall, far from the security of a hospital, far from the safety of an ambulance, and with no one around for miles, nature itself could be fatal for the victim.

E… 

Environment.

There is more than one way that the environment can kill, but none with such peacefulness as hypothermia. The slumbering victim dreams of happier times: the rescuer stands on the horizon, the guy gets the girl, the child is unharmed, the innocent animal is brought to safety. If all else fails, a peaceful sleep awaits the fallen.

A body at rest generates no heat to warm its core. Deep in the wintry forest, with snow-capped peaks all around and the temperature dropping below the freezing mark, nature takes its course. The injured person dreams of endless possibilities, his voyages stretched out in a landscape of eternity from which he cannot escape, even if he wished to break free.

When his body remains still, his internal core ceases its fight to maintain its heat against the elements. With only the whispering wind, and the spray of crystalline snow on his exposed skin, death comes swiftly and painlessly.

All things in nature are perfect, and the body’s response to the unrelenting cold is no different.

First, the body shivers, in an effort to warm itself against the chill. The circulatory system experiences involuntary vasoconstriction, the veins narrowing to preserve the heat that flows from organ to organ. The descent into hypothermia can be stopped at any time, with a warm drink, the hot air blasting out of an automobile’s heat vents, or a warm body adjacent and naked.

When no saving mechanism appears, the victim becomes confused, uncoordinated, pale with colorless skin as his body forces the last of the warm blood to protect its vital organs instead of the numbed fingers, toes, and lips that have already turned blue, capillaries bursting black with frostbite.

As the temperature drops, the victim reaches a marker on the road of no return.

He feels warm, his veins unable to maintain their course of protecting the core, his body’s thermoregulation shot, brain addled by the mixed signals. He strips off his clothes. His skin feels hot. Boiling. If he doesn’t cool himself with the contact of the snow on his skin, he’ll surely burn alive from the inside out.

He wallows in the snow naked, nature’s perfect whiteness. 

And then, when he chills further, he burrows into the snow. With aching arms and elbows, he digs, creating his den in which to sleep, the same way some bears hibernate in the winter woods.

It is human nature to travel this path, the same way humans cooperate within their societies, the same way they have sex, male and female, the same way their species thrives. But the nature of winter’s chill and the peace that follows demand a heavy price. There is no escape from the clutches of hypothermia’s solace once the human body and mind reaches this stage.

For centuries, the winter travelers fought a war with hypothermia. It took the Napoleonic army’s surgeon to notice that revival was a possibility. Too much warmth brought certain death, while a carefully metered reintroduction to the flames offered a flicker of hope. With a slow re-warming, there was a chance that a victim could return from the brink of death’s icy grip.

When all else failed, there was F…

He was…

Fucked.

~~~


	4. Chapter 4

_With the murmuring streams where the laurel entwines far out in the wilderness vales_

The morning flew by for Ennis, with the team making slow progress in the deep snow. At noon, they came to a flat area sheltered from the wind by a stand of pines, but they still had another thousand feet of vertical to climb before they would reach the area where Davis was last seen. The weather had improved enough that they could see some patches of blue sky forcing their way through the clearing clouds overhead, and the dark shadows of tree trunks could be seen behind them through the blowing snow. Jeff made the decision to go ahead when he noticed the weather was improving. The team agreed that it would be best for Jeff and Ennis to go ahead, unencumbered with gear. That way, if Davis were dead, the whole team would not be put at risk of being caught in an avalanche on the vertical section, and if Davis were alive, the team would be fresh from a rest break. They’d be able to advance forward quickly in Ennis and Jeff’s tracks.

As he climbed the steep slope, Ennis was grateful that he had quit smoking. He sucked in the icy air through his balaclava. With his chapped lips, he felt the moisture his breath had left on the inside of the fabric. He fought the urge to lick his lips, knowing that it would bring worse pain in the long run. He and Jeff were working up a sweat as they slowly made their way through the drifted snow, following in each other’s snowshoe prints for no more than fifty paces at a time until they couldn’t stand the burn in their quadriceps for another moment. They were switching the lead when Ennis caught sight of something blue on the slope ahead of them. He grabbed Jeff’s arm and pointed toward the partially buried sleeping bag.

“We have visual contact,” spoke Jeff into the walkie-talkie.

They plowed ahead through the snow, forgetting that their bodies required them to climb slowly on such a steep slope, muscles screaming from lack of oxygen. They both called, “Davis, can you hear us? Davis!”

Miraculously, an arm rose from the sleeping bag.

~~~

Jack Twist radioed the ad hoc Twin Lakes ground crew with his intention to land, the fierce winds rattling the rotors and squealing through the cracks of the helicopter’s doorframe. A few volunteers worked to clear the drifting snow from the makeshift landing pad. Jack could barely make out the dim lights that surrounded the circular landing area through the driving snowstorm. He gingerly lowered the shaking helicopter and finally touched down with a satisfying thud. The ground crew members shouted out a few congratulatory whoops and gave Jack a thumbs-up before retreating inside the headquarters, pleased with their new coworker’s landing.

Jack powered down and removed his headset. Four years of Army training had prepared him to land in rain, fog, and sandstorms, but he quickly realized that for all his smugness, he was nervous flying in the snow. He sighed, thankful that he had balls enough to try it. Since he didn’t have a summer assignment yet, other than to fly the chopper when necessary, anything he did that bordered on spectacular would certainly help his chances of getting a choice of forestry positions. He couldn’t bear to be the one cleaning restrooms at a National Park or lecturing Boy Scouts on a nature trail. He wanted something more adventurous than that - maybe he’d like to be stationed at a fire tower, or as a ridgerunner, or hell, a smoke jumper. Now, that would be more his speed.

When Wayne recruited him to work for the Forest Service solely because of his ability to fly the chopper, Jack didn’t care what summer assignment he got, as long as he didn’t have to return to his parents’ ranch in Lightning Flat. Living under the same roof as his father was Jack’s worst nightmare. He resolved to take things day by day and see where his new job might take him. He hoped that the rest of this day would get better. It couldn’t get too much worse than this- being awakened at four in the morning, having to fly a helicopter in a storm, and pining over Ennis Del Mar. Shit, at least the weather might improve.

An hour before Jack arrived, the Twin Lakes Ranger Station had been a hive of activity. Now the only personnel left were the short-wave radio operator, a couple of volunteers to clear the helicopter for takeoff if a survivor was found in the search, and the paramedic who would be riding shotgun in the helicopter with Jack if, and when, they were dispatched to the scene. That must be the paramedic, Jack thought, as the curly haired man with fat cheeks approached. He carried a white suitcase marked with the universal Red Cross symbol for medical aid.

“Hey, I guess you’re the new hotshot around here who’s gonna fly the chopper. Brian Fisher,” the man said, extending his hand to Jack.

“That’s what I’m told,” smiled Jack, shaking Brian’s hand. “Jack Twist.”

“You got any medical experience?”

“Not really, just what I seen from flyin’ evacuations. Army training,” said Jack.

“I hope to be able to count on you when we get in there, Jack… ya know, in case he’s real bad off and I need a hand,” Brian said.

“You bet. Just let me know what you need,” Jack replied.

“Will do. I’m gonna head out to the chopper and load the medical supplies. Won’t take two of us, so you might as well warm up in here. We’ll know soon enough if we have to go at all,” Brian said.

“Ok, nice ta meet you, Brian,” Jack said.

Jack flung himself down at a table and rested his stubbled chin on his hands. He closed his eyes and inhaled the scent of stale coffee and mildewed gear drying in the fake propane heat. He couldn’t wait until summer arrived. He hoped he would be stationed high in the mountains of the Sawatch Range. There was bound to be a lot of activity there during the summer. Maybe he would forget the Army, forget Lightning Flat, and forget the rodeo as viable escapes from his otherwise boring life. He remembered the days he spent just a little farther north, five summers ago, with Ennis. Perhaps he could recreate some of that magic here in Colorado. Shit, maybe he’d even meet somebody who would help take his mind off Ennis, although he seriously doubted it. This was, after all, just a short distance away from the God-fearing country where he and Ennis were raised. Folks there had no tolerance for two men being together.

~~~

“Okay, here’s this pile. K.E. is gonna have to get the last two boxes,” Laurie Del Mar’s sleek blond ponytail bounced up and down as the young woman dropped an armful of sweaters onto the daybed. She smiled at Alma, exposing her crooked teeth and patted her on the head with an open palm, as if she were a pet dog or cat. “Don’t be so glum, Alma, I just know everything is going to work out fine,” she said, her voice chipper as a songbird on the first day of spring.

Alma wiped her runny nose with the back of her hand and shuddered undecidedly when footsteps thumped their way down the stairs like someone was in a hurry and couldn’t be bothered to take each step, missing a few along the way. She wouldn’t have agreed to accept Laurie’s offer to move into Laurie and K.E.’s home in Lander, if it hadn’t been her only option.

“Here he is! Here is my Cookieman!” Laurie slapped K.E. on the ass playfully. He didn’t bother to fend her off, depositing more boxes against the paneled wall of the former rumpus room. The overcast sky filtered through the two windows mounted high on the longest wall.

Alma noticed that K.E. was a couple inches taller than her ex-husband, but he had the same sun-kissed waves that curled after too many weeks without a trip to the barbershop. It felt uncomfortable being a guest in his house, but she had no other choice.

She twirled a strand of her hair between her fingers nervously. “I don’t know how to thank you K.E,” she breathed. “I’d like to try by watching the girls, but I don’t know if I’ll be any good at it, since I never had none of my own. Can’t really promise anything right now, sorry to say.”

“Don’t you worry ‘bout it Alma,” K.E. smiled. “If my shit-fer-brains brother comes to his senses, the two of you will be reconciling and making babies in no time.”

“K.E!” admonished Laurie. “You get your ass upstairs and leave me and Alma to sort out her things.”

K.E. leaned in for a peck on the cheek from his wife.

“Get lost now! Leave us be, so we can have some girl talk. I’ll deal with you later Mister Cookieman.” Laurie slapped her husband’s butt again and forced him out the door, closing it behind him.

“I’m sorry, Alma,” Laurie said. “K.E. means well, but sometimes he speaks out of turn, even more than I do. I do hope you’ll be able to get settled in here for a while.”

“Well, I truly can’t thank you enough for coming to my rescue,” Alma said.

Laurie took Alma’s arm and they sat on the daybed. “I’m awfully sorry to hear that you had nowhere to go, Alma.” She looked at the floor, then back at her friend. “Do you want to talk about what happened? About the fire? Or with Ennis? You know I’m always here to listen.”

Alma’s problem with Ennis was the last thing she wanted to talk about. From an early age, Alma was taught that such matters were never meant to be discussed, even with a trusted friend. “Well, you know how my folks are,” Alma said, dismissing the request and trying to gather herself a bit more. “They sure don’t understand how things could have gone so wrong between me and Ennis. It didn’t feel right for them to let me stay at their house.”

An uncomfortable silence passed. Alma’s eyes pleaded for understanding on Laurie’s part.

“I know,” started Laurie. “They’re part of the church-going crowd that was cut from the same cloth as my K.E. and your Ennis. Tough to change them now, though Lord knows I have to try with K.E. every day.” Laurie laughed under her breath.

Alma shot her an uneasy look.

“Sometimes I thank God I met K.E. before he got too far down that path. I turned him into a regular sinner. His folks wouldn’t have been too proud of that, had they lived to see the day. Now, I almost got him fixed up just the way I want him,” she giggled.

“Oh Laurie,” Alma protested, anxious because the conversation was crossing into forbidden territory. “Can’t really blame them for wanting to do right by their folks. It’s only natural that they want to grow up to be the way they was taught to be. Ennis and K.E. didn’t have much time with their parents, but I’m okay with the way they were brought up. Didn’t do no harm.”

“I’m not so sure,” Laurie said quietly.

“How do you mean?” Alma asked.

“Well, sometimes K.E. beats himself up awful over tryin to do what his folks would have wanted. Always workin’ one job too many to try to get ahead, saves every dime he makes, not wantin’ to end up in the poorhouse with nothin’ to show for a lifetime of hard work. Makes me feel like I’ve won a grand prize when I can get him to spend money on a vacation or clothes from Sears for the girls. He needs to feel like he’s done right by his folks, but sometimes, he’s just got to let go, live a little, instead of dwellin’ on doin’ things the way his folks brought him up. It’s sad, dontcha think?”

“I’m not one to say,” Alma answered, tugging her woolen sweater around her tighter, holding the emotions in before they could spew all over the room like confetti at the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade. “I thought I done right by my folks. I always did what I was told. But here I am—no place to go, no husband, things not at all how I thought they would be. I know I’ve disappointed my folks terribly.”

“Alma, you hang in there, and we’ll find a way to fix this. Don’t you worry,” Laurie cupped Alma’s chin in her hand. “Why don’t I give you some time to unpack while I fix lunch. It’s almost noon. I’ll give a shout when it’s ready, okay?”

“Okay,” Alma said.

Laurie hugged Alma tightly before she left, closing the door behind her. Alma sunk to the floor when she heard Laurie’s footsteps climbing upstairs to the main house. She wrapped her arms around her knees. The cold from the underlying cement crept up through the threadbare carpet and seeped into her bones. She glanced at the few stacks of boxes containing all her possessions, pushed neatly against the paneled wall. She shook in the chilly air of her new home, taking in the tiny windows that wouldn’t open, the one door that would, and the four dark walls boxing her in, keeping her safely inside.

It wasn’t supposed to be this way, her tears protested. She was raised to be a devout wife and mother, nothing else. Because of one man, she was neither. Her head rose when the electric heater clicked on, sending rays of warm air up from the baseboard.

She supposed she ought to be grateful that her former sister-in-law, who was also her oldest friend from Signal, agreed to take her in. When the fire at the Riverton Laundromat caused her to lose not only her home, but also her livelihood, she had sought help from her parents at first. Thinking they would feel some obligation to take their struggling daughter in, give her a warm bed and a place to start over, she pleaded with them to let her stay. She wasn’t surprised to learn that they weren’t kidding when they said that marriage was a one way street from which there was no outlet or escape but death. Alma was still hurt. She had done her best to always obey her parents and do what was expected of her. And where had it gotten her? Abandoned and discarded like an old rag, unfit for even the grubbiest cleaning job.

Alma dragged a cardboard box to where she sat against the wall. When she opened the flaps of the carton, the smell of smoky ruins escaped the confines of the cardboard. She was lucky that the fire department was able to salvage what they could. This box contained some old magazines, decorative candles, and photographs in metal-edged frames. She inspected each image as it was unpacked from between the thick copies of Redbook and Ladies Home Journal. There was a photograph of her parents, and one of K.E., Ennis, and Ellen that Laurie had taken and framed for Ennis shortly after she and K.E. were married. Alma took another magazine out of the box and put it aside. She reached in and removed another framed photograph. This one was of Alma and Ennis on their wedding day, the day Alma Beers became Alma Del Mar. Since she was a little girl, she had looked forward to her wedding day. The day had begun full of hope and new beginnings, but had ended in disaster. Her illusions about marriage had ended that night, and she wished she had never anticipated her wedding day so fervently. 

“Why did mine have to turn out this way?” Alma sobbed quietly.

She rooted around in the bottom of the box and produced a silver cigarette lighter from among the candles. It was one of Ennis’s. He had always favored them over matches.

Flipping the metal lid open, and pushing the wheel with her thumb, she ignited the flame. She stared at the blue fire in her right hand and the wedding photograph in her left. She barely noticed the sound of Laurie descending the stairs and knocking gently on the door. The flame grew hot and made the skin of Alma’s thumb smart.

“Alma!” Laurie called. “Time for lunch.”

Alma dropped the lighter and brought her stinging thumb between her lips.

~~~


	5. Chapter 5

_In the banner that furls at the closing of day, returning at break of the dawn_

Somewhere in the forest, a fire burns bright. Beginning as a spark, it grows until the leaping yellow flames flash with the destruction it wreaks upon the land. Its smoky haze obscures the views of the peaks and valleys that ramble over the earth’s crust. Since the dawn of mankind, fires have consumed the forests. The fossils that are left behind bear the scars of their battle with the unstoppable and inevitable flames.

Lightning is the most damaging force of nature in the Rocky Mountains. Residents and travelers alike know enough to stay away from the high peaks on the hot summer afternoons when the rumbling clouds are most likely to begin their light display. A single strike can ignite a forest and kill those who challenge the exposed peaks in every season.

Even more dangerous than lightning are the careless acts of human beings. The spark of a cast-off cigarette can start a conflagration, turning a century or more of growth into a blanket of smoldering ash. A campfire left unextinguished can have its firebrands blown in the wind, spreading the damaging flames far beyond the campsite. Smokey Bear reminds man of the dangers posed by one careless match.

When the air is dry, without any humid breeze, the fire’s intensity can grow in bold proportions. The moistureless deadwood on the forest floor is the first to go, the fire consuming its snapping branches and every crunching leaf of autumn that has been left behind. When the dry forest floor is littered with combustible material at a height of land, the fire shows its true violence, racing uphill at speeds of seven miles per hour to incinerate everything in its path. Only the night wind can turn back its advance, when the cooler sinks into the valley, forcing the fire to take a path downhill.

For decades, the Army has worked with the Forest Service to manage the suppression of forest fires, especially when lives, homes, or high-value timber is threatened. In 1935, the Forest Service instituted the 10 AM policy, stating that any fire that had begun in the forest would be under control by 10 AM the following day. Equipped with fire resistant clothing and tools to install a break line, a team can ensure that a forest fire is managed so that more damaging fires can be prevented.

Often, a controlled burn prepares the earth to ready itself for new growth. Destruction of the unfit shrubs reduces the competition for the hardy plants that will take their place, fed by the mineral rich ash. The smoke jumpers risk their lives for the forest’s health, facing a certain death if their decisions are wrong, not to mention the heat stress and respiratory issues from smoke inhalation that they will suffer for their efforts.

In the summer of 1956, Kerouac gazes God-like over the terrain beneath Desolation Peak. The firetower sentinel takes his place, spending days exploring and watching over the vast and unchanging landscape, seeking that elusive plume that will force a decision whether to let the forest burn or send it a team to direct its path. There are advantages to each course.

Embracing nature’s way by allowing a forest to burn to the ground offers a chance at rebirth. It’s hard to imagine that such destruction might be beneficial, but tell that to the newly rooted sapling basking in the sun. Tell the conifer whose seeds are released only when the fire determines the time is right. Tell the forest greenery feeding on the soil that has been laid anew with a banquet of nutrients, ensuring the continuation of the forest life-cycle.

Incinerating the old duff might wipe the slate clean, like ending a bad relationship without carrying its baggage into an uncertain future. It only takes the courage to leave the charred landscape behind.

~~~

Ennis was alarmed when he and Jeff finally got close to Davis. Apparently he had partially wriggled out of the sleeping bag sometime in the night. He had removed his hat and mittens. His jacket was half off, and he had torn his wool shirt open, scattering the buttons. Both Jeff and Ennis had seen this happen to other hypothermia victims in the past. When the body’s temperature lowers, the blood vessels constrict, sending signals to the brain that make the victim believe they are overheating. He knew that victims sometimes pulled off their own clothing, thinking they are too hot.

It was not a good sign.

By the time the rest of the team arrived, Ennis and Jeff had begun to treat Davis for hypothermia. They wrapped him in warm clothing from their own packs and began to package him carefully into the toboggan for the descent. Team members anchored themselves securely along the steep slope where they would soon lower him down to the flat area that they had stomped into a landing pad for the rescue chopper. Despite his dislocated limbs, the injured man seemed to be in good spirits and the team was thrilled that he was alive.

“Owen, where’s Owen?” Davis asked.

“Owen made it down,” Ennis said, calming the distraught man, waiting for the other crew members to ascend. “Don’t worry, he sent us here to get you.”

The difficult work of lowering Davis to the level area took several realignments of men and ropes. Four men lowered the toboggan to the next group of men, where they repositioned themselves to lower it farther down the steep slope. When the rope ran out, they had to transfer the toboggan to the next four men. They were on the last stretch when they heard the welcome sound of the RMSAR chopper as it descended through a single patch of blue sky that showed clearly through the clouds. The chopper hovered in the air momentarily before landing effortlessly, the narrow runners sinking into the snow. As the rotor blades whirled to a stop, the pilot exited the chopper, followed by the paramedic with his medical bag. Without snowshoes, both men immediately sank up to their thighs in the deep snow. They had to wait there until Davis was brought to them for assistance.

Once Davis was off the steep part of the slope, Jeff and Ennis pulled the rescue toboggan through the track they had made with their snowshoes, carrying him the rest of the way to the waiting chopper. There, the paramedic went straight to work starting an intravenous line of fluids with the pilot’s help.

“Hold this up here like this,” the paramedic demanded.

“Got it,” said the pilot.

“Jesus, I think he started crashing when we came down that last stretch,” Jeff said. “Just turned all white and started shivering again.”

“We’ll take it from here. You’re gonna be okay, pal,” said the pilot, patting Davis’s chest reassuringly through the many layers of clothing.

Ennis knelt by Davis’s side. “Hold on, bud, you made it this far,” he said softly, holding Davis’s mitten-clad hand.

“Can you get a pulse?” asked the paramedic.

The pilot reached for Davis’s wrist, his bare fingers grazing Ennis’s hand.

“It’s pretty weak,” he said after a moment.

Ennis tried to place the familiar voice, but with all the layers, hats, goggles, and facemasks, he could have been President Johnson, for all he knew.

“Let’s get him loaded,” called the pilot.

Ennis listened carefully to the voice. It was like that of a forgotten cousin he had only met once or twice, or a neighbor kid from a long time ago, the years making the voice remote from his memory. Ennis looked up again to catch a glimpse of the pilot. Even through his flight goggles, Ennis could make out the familiar eyes, a reminder of someone he once knew.

“Hey,” he said softly, experimentally, lost in the blue, disbelieving his own eyes. He placed his hand over the pilot’s hand that had sought a pulse.

“Hey, yourself,” said the pilot, without looking up.

“OK, let’s load him- on three,” the paramedic announced. “One…”

The pilot grabbed hold of the foot of the toboggan opposite Ennis, while the paramedic and Jeff managed the head of the litter.

“Two…”

Ennis couldn’t take his eyes off the pilot. _It couldn’t be Jack. It just wasn’t possible._

“Three...”

The group lifted the toboggan upward and slid it into place inside the helicopter.

“Jack?” Ennis whispered tentatively as the toboggan came to a rest inside the cavity of the chopper.

Jack’s lashes fluttered open and he looked up at Ennis. “Ennis?” Jack removed his goggles and squinted in disbelief when their eyes finally met.

“It’s me,” Ennis said, shoving his balaclava up onto his forehead. They both stood with wide eyes and mouths open in disbelief as the world around them came to a silent stop. Ennis was sure the other rescuers could feel the tension between them, but the team members only responded to their individual assignments within the SAR mission, oblivious to the reunion that was taking place.

“Ennis… what happened?” Jack asked. “Why are you here?”

“Jack… it’s you?” Ennis asked, dumbfounded.

Ennis felt the heat rise from his toes to his ears as he and Jack continued to stare, wordlessly reconnecting the circuit that was broken five years earlier. Each man was barely recognizable to the other, not only because of the winter clothing, but because the passage of time and the acquisition of responsibilities had left signs of maturity on their faces.

Brian was yelling about something, but neither Jack nor Ennis understood because their senses were flooded with memories. Memories of sheep and dogs and coyotes and killing an elk. Memories of making love under a black starlit sky. Memories of shared warmth in a tent covered with snow.

Puffs of breath escaped their mouths as they both struggled to find words.

“What are you doing here?” Jack whispered.

“Jack…”

“Come on Jack, let’s go!” shouted Brian.

“S’alright. I’ll find you. I’ll come find you,” Jack said eagerly to Ennis, his eyes sparkling. Ennis let go of the toboggan and backed away, his dark eyes smiled, holding Jack to his promise.

Brian closed the cargo bay and grabbed Jack’s arm and pulled him toward the door. Jack climbed into the chopper, put his headset on, and fired up the motor for takeoff. As he shifted the controls, Jack spared a glance at Ennis, but he knew a man’s life was in his hands. There was no time for sentiment. He smiled and steered the chopper carrying Davis Wentworth across the mountains, through the valley, and to the hospital in Buena Vista.

Ennis watched the helicopter fade from view. His heart was pounding so fast that he felt like he could hardly breathe.

“Everything alright, Ennis?” asked Jeff.

“Did you see that guy? Do you know who that was?” he asked.

“Must be that new pilot from Salida,” Jeff said.

“How long has he been working for RMSAR?” Ennis asked. Surely he would know if Jack Twist was working in a partnering agency.

“Couple weeks. Shit, Ennis, I thought you knew him, the way you were standing there talkin’ to him,” Jeff said.

“He’s someone I knew from a long time ago. Jesus, all this time, I thought he was dead,” Ennis said.

“Well, he looked plenty alive ta me,” Jeff thumped Ennis on the back. “Let’s get goin’.”

Ennis replaced his balaclava and prepared to head back down the mountain with the rescue team.

~~~

On the horizon, Jack maneuvered the chopper over the ridge and above the next snowy valley. The dissipating clouds allowed him to see all the way to Route 82, a half-dozen miles away. He hugged the contour of the hill, staying low to the ground, the way he was trained.

He couldn’t help thinking about Ennis.

“Well, I’ll be damned,” he muttered to himself while Brian worked on Davis. _What the hell is Ennis doing here? Isn’t he supposed to be married and livin’ in Wyoming? Goddamn._

Jack couldn’t wipe the grin off his face over meeting Ennis again, but with sadness he remembered the unexpected fist making contact with his left cheek. The crushing blow caused a rift during their last night together on the mountain. They never spoke about it during the twenty-four hours that followed, and neither apologized for the circumstances that led to the punch.

Jack had wanted to believe that Ennis was sorry as they stretched out skin to skin for the last time. His sad heart tried to extract more comfort from Ennis’s final caresses than Ennis could ever offer with his words. Jack imagined he heard Ennis speaking the words he needed to hear, _I’m sorry… It’s alright… I love you…_ with each final stroke of Ennis’s hands. The memory of those caresses would have to last him for all of the lonely nights when he had to settle for dreams alone.

The idea that the man could be in his life again had Jack smiling wide.

“No rush, Jack. He’s dead,” Brian said with exasperation, when they cleared the ridge.

“You gotta be fuckin kiddin me,” Jack said.

“Heart stopped,” said Brian with a nod. “I can’t get him to start breathing.”

“Sonofabitch!” Jack smacked the vinyl of the seat next to him.

Jack knew the heart-stopping incident was most likely the result of warming too quickly from the clutches of hypothermia. Jack had heard about these things happening before. Brian confirmed it for him. The human heart is fragile when it becomes cold. A freezing body needs to be warmed very slowly if their heart is to survive the shock. Sometimes, the re-warming didn’t work the way it was supposed to, and the patient’s heart stopped pumping blood. Nothing they could do about it on the side of a mountain. And nothing they could do about it in the air.

Jack reclined back in his seat, the urgency of the flight draining from his mind. Brian joined him in front, strapping himself into the passenger seat.

“Well, this sucks,” Brian said after a somber moment passed.

“Thought we got him in time,” Jack said, shaking his head.

“That’s the nature of this business,” Brian said, looking over the frozen landscape that slipped by the window.

“Nice try, Brian,” Jack said, elbowing Brian’s arm. “You did some good work there.”

“Thanks. You too. Hey, Jack, you smell fuel?” Brian asked.

Jack instinctively looked at the fuel gauge.

“What the Christ?” he asked as the chopper began to jerk down the valley.

“Fuck! I thought we had a full tank when we took off, now it looks like we’re on empty,” Brian yelled.

“Goddamnit, Jack,” Jack cursed himself. He should have been paying attention to this kind of shit when instead, he was all goo-goo-eyed for Ennis Del Mar. Something must have come loose when he landed this old piece of shit bird in the snow. It was the fuel line, he guessed.

The chopper bucked and dipped above the icy slopes. Jack leveled off and quickly decided to try for a nearby flat area to land. A narrow ledge of new snow lay halfway between the head of the valley high up the mountain and the road below in Twin Lakes.

“Hang on,” Jack said.

“I’m hanging,” said Brian.

The engine stopped. The chopper swerved and one runner caught in the snow, forcing the vehicle over onto its side, slamming the passengers into the controls and cracking the cabin open like a raw egg. Riveted seams ripped at jagged angles. The rotors shattered on impact with the slope and pieces of metal flew across the snowy landscape, some shrapnel driving deep into the frozen snow, other parts clattering down the valley, bouncing off the walls of rock and ice. An eerie silence filled the space that had been occupied by the sound of machinery in flight and the banter of two coworkers.

Jack wasn’t sure how much time had passed before he opened his eyes and saw Brian next to him in the smashed cockpit of the chopper. Brian looked to be unconscious. Jack tasted blood in his mouth. He groaned and touched his lip with the pads of his fingers. He drew his hand back and stared at the bloody shine. A brief smile came to his face. He closed his eyes and pressed his fingers to his lips again. Not fifteen minutes ago, the same fingers had touched Ennis’s hand. Jack was going to see to it that, come hell or high water, his fingers were going to get to touch that man again.

Brian began to stir.

“Whoa, Jack,” Brian groaned.

“Hey, how ya doin?” Jack asked.

“That was one hell of a landing, asshole,” Brian grinned.

“Didn’t mean ta land that rough,” Jack said.

“Damn good thing I strapped in,” Brian said.

“Same here. Are you all right?” Jack asked.

“Don’t think nothin’s broken,” Brian fiddled with the hasp on the seatbelt. “Except the rig.” He slumped onto his side with gravity, freeing himself from the straps. Jack waited until Brian wriggled out of the way, before loosening his own restraints. He lowered himself down into the space next to Brian.

“Goddamn, I need a cigarette,” Jack said, tugging his hat down over his ears.

“Let’s get the fuck out of here first,” Brian said.

“Looks like the radio still works. I’m gonna call in our location,” Jack said as he began to flip on the switch.

Jack felt the motion of the hill sliding beneath the chopper before he heard the single thunderous clap. A foreign sound, on this day that had cleared enough now to feature only a cloudless blue sky. Still, the first impression of every living thing was to look to the sky and confirm that there were no billowing thunderheads, no lightning strike, no rain pouring down. When the final confirmation came that the noise was not thunder, panic washed over Brian’s face. Having lived in these mountains all his life, he knew all too well the reason for the lone deafening crack that filled the air. It was the sound of packed snow separating from the slopes above them, the force so powerful that it made the only other sound in nature like that of thunder. 

“Avy!” Brian screamed at Jack. Jack looked out the windshield in time to see the wall of snow overtake them. But it was too late to do anything. They could only ride the avalanching slab as it tore the chopper from its level perch and tossed the wreckage down the valley with them inside.

~~~


	6. Chapter 6

_In the woodsmoke that curls to the sky and away, is the penchant that’s luring me on_

After lunch, Alma helped clear the table while Laurie washed the dishes. The two girls begged their father to go to the playground.

Lisa, five years old, with her golden hair the same color as her mother’s, ran to the closet to get her sweater and a jacket for her younger sister. Linda toddled after her into the hallway, intent on an outing.

“Here we go,” K.E. said as he helped Linda with her zipper.

“Swings,” Linda shouted. “Want to ride the swings.”

“They love playing on the swings,” Laurie said, hanging the dishcloth over the faucet to dry. “We’re lucky to have such a nice playground in our neighborhood.”

“We used to have a playground in our neighborhood back home too,” Alma said. “Are you sure you don’t want to go with them?”

“Mama, come with us!” Linda ran from the hall and clung to Laurie’s thighs.

Laurie sighed.

“It’s okay if you want to go,” Alma said. “I still need to unpack some of my things, I won’t be much company for you here.”

“You need to help Daddy push,” Lisa pleaded.

Laurie shrugged at Alma. “Lemme get my jacket,” she said to the girls as she headed for the closet. “If you’re sure you don’t mind being alone for a while, Alma?”

“No, I don’t mind,” Alma said. “I’m used to being alone in my apartment anyway. It’s no bother.”

“We won’t be long,” Laurie said, giving Alma’s shoulder a squeeze.

K.E. and Laurie gathered up the girls and closed the kitchen door behind them.

Alma wished she could have gone along, but she knew she was only invited out of courtesy. She watched the family walk down the street to the park, as if it were the most natural thing in the world to do on a Sunday afternoon. She could picture the two girls who would have still been her nieces if she and Ennis had stayed married. She could have enjoyed a day at the park with the girls, pushing them on the swings or watching them on the slide, the simpler days of their innocence still intact.

Alma realized she shouldn’t waste this opportunity to unpack the rest of her belongings so she could be comfortable in K.E. and Laurie’s home during her stay. She had no idea how many days would pass before she wore out her welcome, so she tried to make herself useful. First she dried and put away the dishes that Laurie had washed, then she mixed a new pitcher of Kool-Aid for the girls when they returned from the park.

Downstairs, in the rumpus room, Alma dragged one of her boxes onto the daybed, the orange and green bedspread bunching as she slid the cardboard box over its surface. She sat cross-legged with a pillow at her back while she sifted through the papers that had been saved from the fire. The acrid smell couldn’t be removed from some of the contents. Newspaper clippings, high school memorabilia, and bric-a-brac bore the scent of their trials.

She thumbed through the old newspaper clippings that featured her picture. She had been in the church choir for the whole time she attended high school. The group of teenaged girls performed at the school as well as in church on holidays. Sometimes, a group of the singers would get together to sing Christmas carols for the residents of the town’s nursing home or to march in the Memorial Day parade that wound its way through downtown Riverton.

Alma smoothed a sheet of newsprint with her hand, sorry that the black ink had smudged beneath her sweaty palm. There was a picture of the choir on one side of the paper and on the other was a picture of Margaret Quinn, the girl who always got the leading role in the school plays. 

“Everyone thought she had a beautiful voice,” Alma said with a sigh.

She remembered the day when Father Bodine said she had the voice of an angel. He always chose Margaret when he needed a girl to sing a solo while the congregants filtered into the church on a Sunday morning.

Alma didn’t think Margaret was so special.

“I don’t know why she gets all the attention,” Alma complained one night over a dinner of her mother’s chicken and dumplings.

Ava kicked her chair from across the table. Even though she wasn’t a teenager yet, Ava obviously knew enough to recognize when Alma had spoken out of turn.

“Margaret has a beautiful voice,” Pa said. “We’ve heard her sing at all the church services. And she sang in those plays, too.”

“She came to our school once and sang with a guitar,” Ava said.

“Ron Quinn says he and Rita are thinking of sending her to some kind of school for talented folks,” Pa said. “I’ll bet she’ll be popular with the boys too.”

“George,” Ann admonished, her eyes shifting between Alma and Ava.

“Well, she will,” George reaffirmed.

“I don’t know about that,” Alma said, putting down her fork thoughtfully. “Her nose is covered in freckles and her ears are too big for her head.”

“Alma,” Ann chided.

Ava giggled.

“You’re one to talk,” Ann’s voice traveled sharp across the table to Alma. “I don’t hear any boys knocking on your door.”

Alma opened her mouth to speak, but she couldn’t say anything. Her eyes welled with tears. Her heart clenched tight in her chest until she felt that it might explode.

She was simply trying to point out that Margaret Quinn wasn’t the greatest thing since sliced bread.

Alma sullenly took a sip of milk. She wished that she possessed some redeeming quality that would have gone remarked by the parish priest, or that she earned the admiration of the choir director, or that she got the best part in the school play. There was no reason why she shouldn’t receive some attention. She was just as good as Margaret.

“I wouldn’t be so quick to criticize Margaret. And need I remind you, you’re no Beverly Sills?” Ann finished, clearing her throat.

Alma pushed a dumpling around on her plate. Even her own parents seemed to favor Margaret Quinn over their eldest daughter. It was bad enough that Alma knew they loved Ava more than they did her. Both Ann and George made no secret of the fact that Ava was a good baby, sleeping through the night before she was even a month old, while Alma had colic and screamed bloody murder for hours at a time, waking the nearest neighbors.

Now they made it clear that Alma’s lack of talent and looks made them favor other girls above their own daughter.

No, there were no boys knocking on Alma’s door. Alma wasn’t sure whether to regard that as a positive thing, something that was a testament to her chastity. Wasn’t that what her mother wanted above everything else?

Alma thought that her mother should have been proud that her daughter was pure, but now she seemed critical about Alma’s lack of suitors, angry even. Not for the first time, Alma figured she must have done something wrong. But what could she do to make her mother take notice? To make her mother appreciate her? To be proud of her? If her singing didn’t improve, she’d have to find another way to attract boys to her door, while making sure that she remained chaste.

Alma lay awake at night thinking about it, determined to do something to gain her mother’s approval.

Before the morning bell rang the next day in school, she cornered Janet Lynch, a dirty, rough and wild girl who was one grade ahead of Alma. Alma knew Janet smoked cigarettes with the teachers between classes at Riverton High School. Her parents had a half-dozen children, Janet being the youngest. Surely she had learned a few things about boys from her older brothers and sisters.

“Janet?” Alma asked, looking around to make sure no one was close enough to overhear her. “What do you think about… you know… boys?”

“What do you want to know?” asked Janet, taking a drag off her cigarette, her kinky red hair sticking out of her parka hood.

“How do you find one and make him… you know… love you?” Alma asked.

“To make one ask you on a date?” Janet asked, a little too loud for Alma’s liking.

“Yes,” Alma whispered urgently.

Janet squinted. It looked like she was thinking hard. “I know some things about boys, but I’m not sure how to make one love you,” Janet said. “Why don’t you ask Margaret Quinn? She knows how. She’s always got a group of boys following her around.”

Alma sighed. It wasn’t enough that Margaret had a beautiful voice and could play the guitar, that she wore the best clothes and had the cutest poodle skirt that made her prettier than all the other girls, but now she already knew how to attract boys.

“How does she do it, do you think?” Alma asked.

Janet thought for a long while.

“I’m not sure, but I’ll tell you a secret about her and Bradley McBurney,” Janet said quietly. “Come on.”

Janet led Alma around the back of the school building. As she walked on the blacktop, Alma’s mind raced. Bradley McBurney was the most handsome boy in all of Riverton High school. With his sleek blond hair and his success on the football team, he was the most popular kid in the school. Alma had heard a rumor that he and Margaret were boyfriend and girlfriend.

Janet stopped by the shed where Mr. Dugar, the school janitor, kept his rakes and lawn supplies. After making sure no other kids were lurking nearby, the girls snuck out to the football field. The bleachers blocked much of the view of the school. It didn’t really matter, most teachers would have turned their heads and looked the other way if the girls were caught. The teachers didn’t mind if the kids were trying to be adult-like by going out for a smoke. In fact, they’d applaud them for their maturity.

“What’s going on between Bradley and Margaret?” Alma pleaded. “This is far enough.”

Janet giggled as she crushed out her cigarette on the grassy field after she took a final drag.

“Okay, get this,” Janet said, in a conspiratorial whisper. “Margaret told Jeannie Wilson that she and Bradley were sitting next to each other in Mrs. LaPointe’s class to watch a filmstrip about World War II. Kids from Mrs. Yost’s class had to cram into the room too because they all needed to see it for a big test next week. It was really crowded, so Margaret and Bradley’s seats were right next to each other and all the lights in the classroom were turned off so they could see the screen better.”

“So?” Alma asked impatiently. She didn’t want to get in trouble for being late for school and the bell was about to ring.

“So,” Janet said leaning forward. “Bradley took Margaret’s hand and put it on his _penis.”_

“No!” Alma said.

“Yes,” Janet said. “Can you believe that?”

The school bell rang through the air. For five seconds, Alma stood there with her mouth agape. No, she couldn’t imagine why Bradley would have done such a thing. Putting Margaret’s hand on his penis? It was unthinkable. But in the same breath, she wondered whether it was over the fabric of his pants or whether it was against his skin. Suddenly, Alma couldn’t breathe.

Alma knew about the birds and the bees. A few years earlier, when Alma was thirteen years old, she had been sent to a special presentation of the Future Homemakers of America, where she learned about her _monthly visitor,_ as Ann had called it. Alma was so surprised that her mother had signed her up to go to the presentation, knowing how the talk of anything below the waist was frowned on as being sinful.

There were other girls from Alma’s class there in the new Grange Hall. It was like a big secret meeting that no one had dared to talk about ahead of time in school. Alma blushed furiously when the nurse from Riverton Hospital talked about such private things. Alma almost fainted when the nurse told about the part where blood would unexpectedly pour out of her without her even knowing about it until she had to be dismissed from school to go home to change into a clean pair of pants.

Learning about what would inevitably happen to her, to all girls, was like a bad dream. She was sure that she would soon wake up and learn that the lesson was something she imagined from seeing a horror movie at the Gem Theater. She prayed that the nurse was wrong and such a horrifying thing wouldn’t happen to her. Hadn’t she always been a good girl? What had she done to be punished with this affliction that would make her to think about the part of her body that Ann only ever referred to as _down below?_

The presentation only became more terrifying as Alma learned about eggs and tubes and how her husband would insert his penis into her to fertilize these so-called eggs. She shuddered to think. It was sinful to be touched in that way, so how was Alma going to tolerate it when she got married? It was as if the Future Homemakers meeting was trying to undo everything Alma had been taught by her mother, and everything that was supported by her church and society itself. But Alma had no way of erasing the effects of what she had been taught. Surely she couldn’t be expected to believe that her own parents engaged in this behavior of inserting her father’s penis? Not after everything her mother had always told her about the evils of sex. Letting someone touch her or God forbid _see her,_ down below… the mere thought of it made Alma want to fall to her knees and repent.

She had to rethink her future. She was expected to marry and raise a family, something that her mother had always insisted was the greatest achievement in life for a woman. The physical aspects of marriage filled her with utter dread.

“What did Margaret do when Bradley put her hand _there?”_ Alma finally managed as she and Janet ran back to the school.

“She slapped him right across the face,” Janet said.

“Good for her,” Alma said. “I guess.”

Alma wondered what it might feel like for a boy to take her hand and put it on the front of his pants, but she tamped down those thoughts and convinced herself it was disgusting, just like Margaret had.

Margaret was a good girl, with the voice of an angel, even. She was no sinner and neither was Alma. Alma vowed that if anything like that ever happened to her, she’d react the same way. It made her feel a little closer to Margaret, warmer for standing in the sunshine of the popularity that Margaret enjoyed.

From that day forth, Alma walked a little prouder, felt a little more confident. She’d thwart any boy’s attempt to get close to her area _down below._ It was something she could easily do, and she’d be a better person for it. No fiery pit of hell would claim her.

Alma smoothed the news clipping back into place inside the folder, and thumbed through the remaining newspaper clippings, postcards from her uncle who took a trip to Mexico, and other ephemera of childhood. The folder was heavy with the worthless junk that Alma had saved, thinking it would be important one day. Only now she realized just how quickly those days had sped into adulthood, a time that began when she met Ennis Del Mar.

She wondered where Bradley McBurney was now, and if he ever got anyone to touch his penis again. It made her sad to think that Margaret had married someone else and had a different penis that she was obligated to touch. She wondered for the first time in a long time how Bradley’s penis had felt beneath Margaret’s hand. She thought about Margaret’s husband, Greg…. or Glen something… and wondered if his penis had felt the same way as Bradley’s.

She wondered if Margaret knew how to make a penis work.

~~~

In autumn, the sunlight fades and the ground cools as darkness descends earlier each day. The night air chills the planet for hours that grow longer with each passing day.

A cold wind blows across the peak, swirling down into the valleys, blanketing the forest with frigid air.

The mud of the riverbank freezes solid, the footprints of travelers preserved until the spring thaw. The marshy valley shines in the morning with frost that clings to the blades of sedges, of rushes, of grass. Sedges have edges and rushes are round, grasses are hollow right up from the ground, but they all glimmer with the frost that forms when the temperature drops below freezing.

The winter’s frost glazes the rocks and stones, making them slippery underfoot. The frozen footway waits to be thawed by the weak winter sun when it returns each morning to remind the earth that its rays can melt even the most solid ice in due time.

But when the air remains cold for longer hours of the day and night, the snow finally falls. It clings to the needles of the coniferous trees, and breaks the branches of the deciduous trees with its heavy waterlogged weight.

The long darkness becomes too much for the ice to overcome, and so it remains.

High on the mountain peaks, the leafless krummholz reaches into the wind for rime. The feathered ice grows from frozen moisture born in the wind. The clouds lighten their weight by allowing the flakes of snow to drop freely.

At first the milky flakes flow with the wind, swirling across the landscape without stopping long enough to stick. In the absence of wind, the flakes drop and land one by one, each somehow different and yet the same, just as individuals each have the same heart of man.

Without the sunlight to warm the earth, a dusting of snow layers itself on every rock and tree until it blankets the forest deeply. As each day passes, a new layer shrouds the snow that was born from clouds the previous day.

When the sun shines bright, the top of the snow layer melts into itself, then freezes shiny smooth when night falls with her cold. The snow sinks lower to the base when the air warms, then grows ten times its depth when a blizzard rains down. The wind carves the newly fallen snow into drifts that seem to know no restraints of gravity and sometimes refuse to obey nature’s force, at every challenge.

Day after day, the snowy blanket changes and molds itself to the earth, shaped by wind, sun, and time. The snow grows heavier with melting and refreezing, the cycle of its formation as vast as the striated canyons of the south.

With each passing day, the pressure builds. The snow’s weight is tremendous and each layer rides only on the slick and slippery surface of the re-frozen melt atop the layer beneath it. Sometimes the weight is too much. The pressure builds until something slips.

It begins with a crack of thunder in a cloudless winter sky.

~~~

Ennis didn’t know whether to laugh or cry.

He was firm in his beliefs about most ordinary things, his opinions usually changing with the nearly imperceptible speed of a glacier. But this was different. He couldn’t decide whether he wanted to lash out, or retreat into his own silent shell. Whether he wanted to throw Jack down and have his way with him, or spend hours simply looking into his eyes. Most of all, he wondered what he was going to say to Jack when he saw him next.

He wanted to let loose all the words he had bottled up over the years for Jack, and Jack alone. The words had changed with each passing season. They had become more solemn when it seemed guaranteed that they would remain unspoken. But they seemed to grow more fierce and angry, now that their silence was no longer ensured.

He paced back and forth, wearing the cabin’s wooden floor smooth with his heavy boots. He could hardly believe the scene that had unfolded hours before at the rescue site.

Jack Twist, the man who ruined Ennis’s life, was alive. Alive, and on the side of a goddamn mountain in Colorado. Ennis wasn’t even sure Jack was real, but all he wanted to do was to look into his blue eyes again and touch his own hand.

Ennis held his hand in front of his face, awed that he had actually touched Jack. He put his fingers to his lips, and swallowed hard.

After the chopper left the mountain with the mountaineering accident survivor, Ennis could barely concentrate on making a safe descent with the team. Of course he provided Jeff and company with hot drinks and a place to rest when they reached his cabin. After they got their second wind, the group trekked down the melting road to the Forest Service lot where their vehicles were parked, no doubt whooping it up the whole way because of their successful rescue. Alone in his cabin again, with the company gone for the day, Ennis finally got a moment to himself to think properly.

But he couldn’t stop moving. He ripped the elastic band out of his short ponytail and laced his fingers behind his head as he paced the floor.

“I need a goddamn cigarette, that’s what I need. Jack fuckin Twist- alive. Not only alive, but said he’d come lookin’ for me, find where I live in the woods. How’s he gonna find me? I s’ppose he can ask Brian. Yeah, that Twin Lakes paramedic, the curly haired fella, nice guy, he would tell him, he would tell Jack just how ta get here. Jesus Christ, this whole mess is all his fault,” Ennis talked more when he was alone than he did when he was in the presence of other people who might judge him.

His years as a backcountry ranger taught him that there was no one around who could hear him, anyway, except for the bears and the mosquitoes.

He stomped over to the kitchen and rummaged through a drawer. “Gotta be a goddamn cigarette in here someplace.” He found an old lighter that someone had left behind in the cabin. He flipped open the cover, then flipped it shut again. He remembered well the familiar sound of the lighter from the days when he used to smoke a pack or two per day.

Open, shut, open, shut. Without a cigarette, there was no point in using the lighter, except for the comfort he felt toying with it in his hand. He settled down and began to breathe normally, at last.

“Shit!” Ennis said, remembering that Jeff was coming by with the summer lady tomorrow. He tossed the lighter into the box of matches he kept by the woodstove and resumed his pacing.

“As if I ain’t got enough to think about,” he said.

Visitors always made Ennis nervous. He never knew quite what to say when he showed the summer assistant around the cabin for the first time. The gals that volunteered during the previous summers never seemed to mind his rehearsed speech. What would he say to this one, the woman who would be the summer caretaker when the road opened to the public, and throngs of hikers arrived to climb Mt. Elbert? Ennis was grateful that he would be stationed somewhere deep in the forest by then, and didn’t have to deal with the tourist types. He appreciated the time alone, since he had long considered himself a misfit.

Then, there was Jack. What was he going to say to Jack when he showed up? Give him the grand tour? What if he couldn’t find Ennis? What if Jack showed up at the cabin when Ennis was posted in the forest? Just as well. Then, Ennis wouldn’t have to deal with him being alive.

“If he shows up while I’m here, I’m just gonna tell it to him like it is. My marriage didn’t work out. And my life is fucked up forever. And it’s all your fault, dumbass. Oh, and I’m glad to see that you’re alive, so I can give ya what yer due.”

Ennis cocked his right arm back and let his fists fly, pummeling the back of the old sofa. 

The sky was growing dark when his tirade ended. He stepped out onto the porch, gasping for the cold air. A gentle breeze swept over the lake and ruffled the pines surrounding the cabin. He descended the stone steps, and walked over to where the lake outlet cascaded down the smooth rocks and pooled in shallow gorges. He pulled a beer from the chilly water and popped the top, dropping the metal tab into the opening. The night was clear, unlike the last, and stars began to make themselves visible against the darkness. 

“Welcome to the Mt. Elbert Trailhead Cabin, Twin Lakes Ranger District, United States Forest Service,” he made his well-rehearsed announcement in a deep voice, walking back up the steps and onto the porch. 

“The cabin serves as a forest outpost during the winter months, when the caretaker, _yours truly,_ lives here alone, surrounded only by nature’s magnificence, and the lonely sound of the mountain wind.”

He opened the heavy front door and proclaimed, “The latchstring is always out.”

Ennis entered the cabin and looked back outside through the open door.

“That means, we ain’t got no key. Y’all can just come and go as you please. Don’t matter if I’m sound asleep, or wringin’ one out. Come right on in everybody.”

Ennis fired up the kerosene lantern to ward off the encroaching night and loaded a few thick logs into the woodstove. He sat on the old sofa and removed his boots, leaving them by the door, continuing to sip his beer during the mock orientation.

“The cabin was built by the Civilian Conservation Corps in 1939. The logs were harvested on-site by the work crew from Alamosa. The cabin is heated by a woodstove, and hot water is gravity-fed, from that there big pot on the stove, into the kitchen and bathroom sinks, and my shower,” he remarked while waving his hands around to his imaginary audience.

“The cookstove and lighting runs on propane, but I gotta watch out because once FR 125 gets snowed in, about November, I gotta make the fuel last until May. Radio comes in handy for emergencies like last night… _I’ll tell the story about that rescue right about now.”_

He took a swig of his beer and silently recalled this time last night when Owen showed up. Ennis was pleased that the story had a happy ending. He wondered how the victim fared at the hospital. He would radio Jeff later tonight to ask how things went, and to find out if and when that new blue-eyed pilot from Salida might be paying him a visit. He couldn’t be overly prepared for that.

“Only a dozen or so folks make the trek down the unplowed road in winter, so I’ve got the place pretty much all to myself,” he continued to his imaginary audience.

“When summer comes, the road is clear, and the field in front of the cabin becomes a parking lot. Folks come from all over to climb Mt. Elbert and fish in the lake. The cabin is manned by a summer caretaker _that’s you_ for all the months that the bulk of visitors arrive. Me? I head out into the wild. See a different place every week. Sometimes I get a watch duty from a fire tower, sometimes patrol for illegal campsites, different every summer, different thing to be done every week. Alone, just the way I like it.”

He finished his beer and placed the empty can in the kitchen sink.

“You,” he pointed at the shovel that leaned against the food cupboard. “Do what I do. Follow the rules. Help the tourists. Sell lots of T-shirts and bug dope so we can make payroll. You can sleep wherever you want, if you want to sleep in here at all, just don’t mess with my stuff. Make yourself at home, just take care of the place. I’ll be back to check on things every once in a while.”

With the lantern in his hand, he climbed the rough-hewn staircase to the loft. “And this is where I keep my own gear. Don’t got too much.”

Flopping down on the quilt-covered bed, he grabbed his reading glasses from the top of the nightstand. “This is where I sleep, alone… don’t got no one, neither,” he whispered. “All Jack Twist’s fault.”

He put on his glasses and grabbed a book, planning to wind down with the latest dime store paperback he picked up on his last trip to town. The wind blew across the lake bringing a warm breeze. Warm, only when compared to last night’s storm. The wood of the old cabin creaked and groaned with each soft gust.

Ennis couldn’t keep his mind still enough to concentrate on reading. He dropped the book on the floor, twisted his body to open the nightstand drawer, and put his glasses inside. Before he extinguished the lantern, he examined his hand again, the same one that had touched Jack earlier on this long day. Ennis brought the fingers to his lips again, then touched them to his cheek and wiped a tear from his eye.

~~~


	7. Chapter 7

_Through the mist of the morning that creepingly swirls like wraiths through each little ravine_

Jack felt like he was drowning. He struggled as if he were underwater, trying to catch his breath. If only he could make it to the surface, he would be able to breathe again. His eyes opened, lashes fluttering against a wall of ice.

He fought to free his arms from the snow that filled the crushed cockpit of the chopper. They wouldn’t move. He couldn’t open his mouth to scream. He could barely inhale, except for a few huffed intakes with his nose. He managed to loosen his right hand slightly, his elbow making space in the snowy tomb. He walked his freezing cold fingers over the snow, bringing them to his face. He tapped against the ice mask that had formed where his breath had condensed and frozen.

Using his thumbnail against the edge of the mask, he picked at the ice, chipping off pieces, bit by bit. His nail tore and the droplets of blood stained the snow. Chunk by chunk, the ice was shifted, first to an air pocket near his hand. Then, it was jostled further along his arm. He kept digging and flicking the ice with his bloody nail, eventually accumulating the crystalline debris in the space vacated by his arm.

Finally, a piece of ice near the corner of Jack’s mouth was pried away by his bloody fingers. Jack heaved a cold breath into his lungs, gasping so hard it made his ribs hurt. Working his fingers, the ice surrounding the mask was fully excavated, leaving just the mold of ice between Jack’s face and the air of the cockpit. With a grunt, he forced it out of the way, exposing his face to the air, reveling in the ability to breathe in the fuel-scented oxygen again.

Jack took advantage of the space that became available when the snow and ice compacted with his movements. He slowly tried to dig himself free. There seemed to be a lot of empty space below him. He could turn his head enough to see Brian in the dim cockpit, lying outstretched next to Davis’s well-insulated corpse. Brian’s left arm was twisted in an unnatural angle and blood ran down his face from a gash across his forehead.

“Brian!” Jack called.

There was no response.

“Brian!” Jack’s voice became an exhaled whine.

Jack raised his arms above his head, trying to reach for Brian. The action didn’t involve any real exertion at all. He felt as if his arms had been tugged toward the paramedic.

“Fuck,” he muttered.

Remembering something he learned while reading about search and rescue in avalanche country, he mustered up as much saliva as he could. He opened his mouth and let the spit dribble out of his mouth. Only, it didn’t slide back into his mouth at all. Instead, it dripped from his lips, lingering in a straight line down to the snow he had excavated. He coughed up a wad of spit and forced it outward with a lungful of air. It flew into the snow below his face. He was not only trapped in the helicopter’s wreckage, he was upside down.

“Ugh, Jack?” Brian groaned.

“Brian, hang in there. I’m stuck,” Jack gasped. He reached around in the wreckage overhead. His fingers closed on an ice cold piece of metal, some damaged chopper part that had come loose in the avalanche. He pulled the foot-long piece free.

“Jack?” Brian called.

“I’m gonna try to dig my way out.” Jack plunged the metal into the snow near his legs, carving away at the compacted snow that had sealed him into place. His chest ached with every movement. He wondered if he might have cracked his ribs.

“Fuck! I think my arm is broken,” Brian said, as he ducked away from the chunks of snow that Jack sent his way.

“I can move my legs a little, it won’t be long now before I’m able to help you. Watch out for falling shit,” he cautioned Brian.

With a tremendous heave, Jack pulled his legs from their snowy trap, scattering the packed snow into the cockpit where Brian lay.

Jack lowered himself the rest of the way down, taking care to land on Davis’s corpse, instead of Brian’s battered body.

“Shit, man, my arm is broken for sure.” Blood ran into Brian’s eyes, but he was helpless to wipe it out of the way with his injured arm.

“Yeah, yer head’s bleedin’ too.” Jack flexed his fingers into his palms, gripping and releasing repeatedly, trying to restore some warmth to his frozen digits. He knelt in discomfort, and untied the knots on the tarp that insulated Davis inside the litter. He pulled the plastic sheet from the body and reached around Davis’s neck for a woolen sweater that had been tucked there to prevent further loss of heat when he was still alive. Wrenching the sweater free, Jack struggled to knee-walk toward Brian.

“Fuck, my arm is killin’ me, Jack. Can you help me?”

“Yeah Brian, here.” Jack used the sweater to blot the blood from Brian’s forehead and apply pressure to the bleeding gash.

“Oh, fuck,” Brian said.

“Hey, Brian, I think you know what I need to do about your arm,” Jack said, licking the blood that trickled from his lip.

“Just grab it and pull,” Brian insisted, nonchalantly.

Jack didn’t hesitate. He reached for Brian, locked their hands together in a handshake, braced his left palm on Brian’s shoulder and pulled with all his might. Brian screamed as the bone slid into place, tendons realigning the way they belonged, the muscles relieved from the pierce of the jagged broken bones.

Jack’s chest heaved up and down with the effort.

“Not bad for a rookie,” said Brian, his voice strained.

“Do not attempt this at home,” Jack chuckled. “Ow… my ribs hurt.”

“Damn, that feels better, though,” Brian said.

“Still gotta wrap it up with something so it’s stable,” Jack said, looking to Davis, in hopes of using more of the dry clothing that had been wrapped around him in the rescue.

Brian admired his straightened arm.

Outside, the last rays of sunlight were heading toward the horizon and the cockpit grew darker with every minute.

“We gotta get outta here,” Brian said.

“We ain’t goin’ nowhere right now,” Jack said.

“Getting dark, Jack,” Brian said, biting his bottom lip. “They’re never gonna find us up here.”

“Not tonight, maybe. But they’ll find us,” Jack said. “I know Ennis will be lookin’ for me.”

“Ennis Del Mar?” Brian asked.

“Yep,” Jack breathed, careful not to give too much away to Brian. “Friend of mine from way back when.”

“I’ve known Ennis for a while now,” Brian said. “Works the range in summer, caretaker at the Mt. Elbert Trailhead cabin in winter. Quiet guy. Sorta like a hermit. He don’t say nuthin’ to anyone.”

“Yeah,” Jack said, closing his eyes. That’s my Ennis, Jack thought. Stubborn man. He remembered that it had taken Ennis weeks to start talking to him up on Brokeback, when they were the only two guys around. He came around, in time, though.

“Guess divorce’ll do that to a guy,” Brian said.

“Mmm,” Jack nodded, gathering up the tarp and dragging it over to Brian. So, Ennis was divorced? Yet Ennis had never bothered to look him up. What could he have been thinking?

“Here, Brian, try to get this behind you,” Jack said, pushing the tarp toward Brian’s good arm. “It’s freezing in here and these uniforms ain’t exactly meant for these conditions. If we gotta spend the night, we need to try to stay warm.” 

Jack worked to cover Brian in the plastic tarp, taking care to tuck it tightly behind Brian’s back. 

“What about you, Jack?” Brian asked, his voice sleepy.

“Not enough room for both of us, Brian. You try and get some rest. Mornin’ can’t come soon enough.” Jack said, tugging his hat down to cover more of his ears.

Jack lay next to Brian, separated by the tarp. He crossed his arms and tucked his hands under his armpits to try to warm them. Darkness fell, the only sound the occasional thump of snow as it fell off the trees and hit the remains of the chopper.

Jack tried to sleep, but his mind was occupied with thoughts of their rescue and what they might have to do to help themselves to get out of their situation. He doubted whether they could walk far, even if they were to get out of the wreckage. But Ennis and his team could be on their way to find them. Ennis… divorced and alone in the mountains. Jack needed to find out why. He needed to know whether Ennis had simply forgotten all about Jack Twist, or if he was just as happy to see Jack as Jack was to see him.

“Ennis,” Jack whispered to the encroaching night. “You’ll come find me. I know you will. I can just feel it.”

~~~

Alma had stored away most of her things while the girls were at the park with their parents. Upstairs, she’d put aside the Sunday paper in hopes of having time later to look for a new job. She was lucky to have gotten work at the Riverton Laundromat just before she and Ennis got divorced. She doubted she’d ever have the convenience of living at her workplace again, unless she went to work on a ranch. The small apartment above the Laundromat only had one bedroom, an eat-in kitchen, and a tiny bathroom with a claw-foot tub, but Alma thought of it as home. At least she was able to do her laundry downstairs after she locked up for the night.

“I can help with that,” Alma said, taking the sack of green beans from Laurie.

She vowed that she would do as much as she could to lighten K.E. and Laurie’s load, even if it meant simply helping prepare the food for dinner. The Del Mars were kind enough to let her stay, and K.E. certainly didn’t act like he was the slightest bit uncomfortable with Alma being there.

Alma tossed the beans into the colander and ran water over them.

She supposed K.E. might have objected to providing a roof over the head of his former sister-in-law, after what happened between Alma and his brother, but K.E. was a good-natured soul and didn’t mind helping a friend of Laurie’s.

Alma busied herself with trimming the green beans and tossing their discarded ends into the paper sack. She collected the beans in an enamel bowl, stained white the color of an old man’s dentures. The aroma from the roast that Laurie had started in the oven an hour or so earlier wafted through the kitchen.

“Okay, girls,” Laurie said. “I’m going to have to ask you to take your coloring books off the kitchen table and go finish with them in the living room.”

“Look, Mama! Flowers!” Linda said, holding her coloring project up for Laurie to inspect.

“Oh, that’s beautiful, honey,” Laurie said.

“Can we watch television, Mama?” Lisa asked.

“Not right now. We’re going to eat dinner soon,” Laurie said.

“I stayed in the lines, Mama,” Lisa said.

“Yes, you did,” Laurie said, holding the coloring book up to the light. Just finish with your pictures that you are working on and then get washed up.”

The girls obediently took their coloring books and crayons into the living room and Laurie began to set the table.

Alma put the beans into the pot, which was already sending a gust of steam into the air. She lidded the pot and rinsed her hands in the sink.

Laurie went to the garage door and called, “Cookieman, dinner will be ready in just a few minutes.”

Alma dried her hands and stood in the doorway to the living room, watching the girls finish their coloring. Linda held a crayon in her chubby hand, her tongue trapped between her lips as she concentrated. Lisa was more meticulous, tracing the black outline of her drawing with even pressure.

In the kitchen, Laurie took her turn, washing her hands at the sink. Alma couldn’t help but notice when the door from the garage burst open and K.E. entered the kitchen. After closing the door behind him, K.E. wrapped his arms around Laurie, pressed his chest to her back, and kissed the nape of her neck.

“Ewww, you smell like gasoline,” Laurie said, squirming out of K.E.’s embrace.

“The lawnmower was on empty,” K.E. said. “Just filled it with gas so it’s ready for next time I have to mow.”

“Well, get your grubby hands off me and wash up for dinner,” Laurie said as she flicked a dollop of soapsuds onto K.E.’s nose.

Alma turned her attention to the living room again. Her cheeks blushed with embarrassment. She had never been in the presence of a couple who were as affectionate to each other as K.E. and Laurie. It made her uncomfortable, as if she were seeing behavior that was meant to be reined in, especially in the presence of children. She wondered where on earth K.E. had gotten this trait. He certainly didn’t learn it from his own family—not if Ennis’s behavior was any indicator. Ennis never displayed such overt affection in his life, so it couldn’t be hereditary.

In fact, Alma was sure that no Christian couple should behave like this. It seemed like K.E. was a lot like Bradley McBurney, and Laurie was his willing Margaret Quinn.

Alma shivered as she recalled another time in high school with her friend Janet, who always seemed to know too much about sex for a teenage girl.

“If you had to show one part of your body to a boy,” Janet mused, as they waited on the blacktop for the fire drill to end, “which part would you show him?”

“What do you mean?” Alma asked, nervous about where Janet’s question might be leading.

“Well, would you rather let a boy see your boobs or your privates that your underpants cover?” Janet asked matter-of-factly.

Alma felt her ears burn red, just thinking of the question.

“I don’t know,” Alma whispered. “I wouldn’t want him to see either.” She wanted to remind Janet that such a thing was a sin, but she felt that the news would fall on deaf ears.

“But if you had to pick one… if you just _had_ to, or you’d die… which would it be?” Janet pressed forward.

Alma thought about the question long and hard as they dallied among the hopscotch courts beside the school.

“I couldn’t decide,” Alma said, frustrated. “I wouldn’t want a boy to see anything, ever.”

“Oh, come on,” pleaded Janet. “Pick one! I know which dirty part I would hide from a boy’s eyes.”

Alma stared at her shoes. “Well, which one would you pick then?”

“I’d hide my boobs from him, of course,” Janet said, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world.

Alma nodded, trying to understand. Janet seemed to have put a lot of thought into this and Alma wondered about Janet’s rationale for the decision.

“Why would you hide your boobs, and let him see the other… dirty part?” Alma asked, cringing as she spat out the words, as if the mere mention of her body would get her stabbed by Archangel Michael’s spear.

It was quite simple when Janet explained it. “All boys are going to get married,” Janet said. “And when they do, they’ll get to see a girl’s privates in their underpants anyway when they make a baby. So there’s no need to fuss about hiding that part from a boy.”

“Oh, I didn’t think of that,” Alma said, embarrassed.

Janet certainly knew a lot more about sex than Alma. What she said made sense though, for Alma, too, to keep her boobs hidden for modesty’s sake.

And Alma carried that wisdom with her when Dan Donovan asked her to go to the high school dance—

“Dinner’s ready!” Laurie’s voice interrupted Alma’s reminiscence.

As the girls set the table for dinner, K.E. sliced the roast on a carving tray. Alma helped the girls get into their places before taking a seat herself. Her shoulders went stiff when she watched K.E. pull Laurie’s chair out for her, before sliding it in again when she was seated. He kissed Laurie’s cheek.

Men were an utter mystery to Alma.

She couldn’t understand why they behaved the way that they did. In some ways, she thought it would be nice to have a take-charge man like K.E. in her life. One who would protect and provide at all costs, making sure his family was taken care of. She wondered why K.E. was so different from Ennis.

Laurie and the girls bowed their heads for grace, which K.E. pretended to read from the family Bible that he kept on a shelf close to the table.

“We thank you, Lord, for the food we are about to eat, and I thank you for the ability to put it on the table,” he said with a chuckle.

“Amen,” the girls said in chorus.

As the food was passed around, the children took their share, politely saying _please_ and _thank you_ when they were helped by one of the adults.

Alma wondered about the act it took to bring the girls into existence. She knew the physical aspects of sex as it had been taught at the Future Homemakers of America meeting, but how did K.E. and Laurie overcome what they had been taught?

It was a mystery to her that two God-fearing people could see or touch each other naked. How could they copulate, when it was something that, from the first moment they set foot in Sunday School, she and every other Christian had been taught was sinful? How did a proclamation of marriage suddenly change the couple’s attitude from one of believing sex was a sin to believing it was not only acceptable, but a duty in order to create children?

Laurie and K.E. had done this unthinkable act, but they got their beautiful daughters out of the deal.

Maybe it was a fate worth suffering—casting off the memory of the threatened fiery pit of Hell, in order to have these little angels at their dinner table.

~~~

In some places, such as the 1950s on the plains of Wyoming, sex education as we know it was not taught in public schools. It was not taught by the church. It was not taught by parents. In fact, sex education as we know it was not taught at all. Children learned about reproduction if they lived on a farm where animals bred, or if they had pets that went into heat, mated, and gave birth. Witnessing these incidents of animal reproduction was no guarantee that a child would equivalate their biology with that of human reproduction, but if they were unfortunate enough to be stripped of these experiential farm opportunities, they were on their own when it came to discovering their sexuality.

In some schools, at one point in time, there were no classes for women’s health, birth control choices, gender expression, or teen parenting. Everything from nudity to masturbation was considered _dirty_. Students were punished for drawing a _dirty_ picture, for saying the name of a _dirty_ body part, and for touching themselves in a _dirty_ place. The punishment was upheld by every one of the students’ role models, from revered church leaders to beloved relatives. The student was deemed to have a _dirty_ mind… even if they did not. Those students who were not disciplined enough to ignore their genitals gathered whatever information was available from his or her peers. The information wasn’t always accurate. The misinformation could lead to unwanted pregnancies, sexually transmitted diseases, and worse—an overwhelming shame about sexuality that the student would carry for the rest of her life.

The church preached abstinence, when they said anything at all about sex. Every woman was to remain a virgin until she was married. A girl’s mother might have a stilted talk with her daughter in the moments before her wedding night, but no mention of the biological process in which a human life is formed was ever made in church. The Immaculate Conception was held in the utmost esteem—a model of motherhood to which every girl should compare herself if she wished to uphold the highest standard. There was no such thing as birth control; a large family was the most telling sign of success.

The conventional wisdom of the time did not require parents to teach their children about sex and reproduction. There was too much ignorance, guilt, embarrassment, and anxiety that surrounded the subject. They couldn’t be expected to discuss such a thing with their children, especially not their daughters who they raised to worship an immaculate virgin and who they demanded remain pure for their husbands. The subject was not only avoided at all costs, but stories that contradicted the biology of human reproduction were invented instead to explain the sudden presence of an infant.

Where did babies come from?

Babies were brought by the stork, or the new parents found a baby in the cabbage patch, or they simply chose a new child from the vast selection at the local hospital. These stories were presented as fact in a time where a child’s only power came from their ability to believe in the guidance they were offered by the adults who raised them. If a child were trusting enough to believe in the wisdom of adults, if they didn’t come to their senses and call _bullshit,_ they only had one choice—to believe the stories they were told by the adults into whose care they were entrusted.

If girls did not menstruate, this ruse could have gone on indefinitely. But with their daughter’s thirteenth birthday looming and the inevitable onset of the accompanying blood, a mother had no choice. It was time to come clean. For mothers who had demanded modesty and chaste behavior from their daughters, it was impossible to turn on a dime and expect to discuss the long avoided bodily functions that females experienced. They had burned their bridges. The subject was closed because of their insistence that Immaculate Conception was real, babies are brought by a stork, and Santa Claus comes down the chimney with toys for all the good boys and girls on Christmas morning.

Most girls figured it out.

They got pregnant. Or they had an older sibling who explained that the teachings of the parents were only myths. Or they had such a sex drive that they couldn’t help but touch themselves which led to their figuring it out on their own. But if they had none of those, they simply believed. They trusted the words of their parents. They didn’t touch. They didn’t ask. They didn’t experiment. Because they believed what they were told and what they were taught. They believed sex was a sin.

Nothing and no one gave them a reason to believe any differently.

~~~


	8. Chapter 8

_O’er the meadows unshorn where the dewdrops are pearls, I’ll gaze on a half-hidden scene_

Wayne drove up from Salida late Sunday afternoon and met the returning rescue crew when they arrived at the Twin Lakes Ranger Station. The sun had set, and the snow that melted all day on the roof of the station had turned to icicles with the drop in temperature. The rescue team members that had driven to Twin Lakes from other units that morning departed with their red lights flashing, in hopes of making it home in time for dinner. Inside the headquarters, the Twin Lakes’ rescuers had stripped down to their long underwear, hanging their damp wool shirts and wet jackets to dry above the heating vents.

Wayne inhaled the humid smell of wet gear and sweat. He fondly remembered those days when he was young and fit enough to go out on a rescue. He regretted that he had to turn those duties over to the younger crowd now. More than anything, he was anxious to learn how Jack had performed in the chopper.

“Swooped in like a bumblebee landing on a daisy,” Jeff said while he and the guys threw back a couple beers and ate pizza, waiting for Jack and Brian to return.

“That’s good to hear,” said Wayne. “It’s a relief to know he can fly that old thing. You never know what condition these birds are in when they get donated to us.”

“And you won’t believe what else happened on the mountain today,” said Jeff, tearing a slice of pepperoni from the box.

“What’s that?” Wayne asked, pulling up a chair.

“Turns out, your new pilot knows our Ennis from back in Wyoming,” Jeff said.

“Is that so?” asked Wayne, surprised to learn that Jack had already met an old friend in Colorado.

“Yep,” interjected Ken. “On the way back down the mountain, I asked Ennis about him. He told me about them herdin’ sheep in Wyoming back in ’63. Was right before he went off to get married, and before Jack went into the Army. Surprised the shit outta me to hear Ennis talkin’ so much about himself.”

“I’ll say,” said Dana. “I don’t think I ever heard him speak more than two words in my life.”

“Settle down, guys,” Jeff said, grabbing another round of beer from the fridge, and bringing it to the table. “Ennis is a good guy. Sure, he don’t say much, but he’s got a good head on his shoulders.”

“Don’t say much? That’s why the last two guys that were assigned with him for summer duty promptly asked to be transferred?” asked Dana, rolling his eyes.

“That doesn’t sound good,” said Wayne, accepting a bottle of beer from Jeff.

“He’s got _Does Not Work Well With Others_ written right across his forehead.”

“Shut up, Dana. I think his divorce really wrecked him,” said Jeff. “He started to work here right after he split with the missus. He may be broody, but still, he’s a good guy to have on your side.”

“Do you know what happened?” asked Wayne. “I mean, why’d they get divorced?”

“Nope. Never wants to talk about it,” Jeff shook his head. “Ya know, Wayne, if you haven’t given any thought about where to assign Jack for the summer, putting him with Ennis might not be a bad idea.”

“Jack seems to get along fine with everyone he meets, but I’d hate to lose him for the summer. How else would I keep the chopper in service?” Wayne asked.

“Don’t worry, we can always get Jack out of the woods if you need him, besides, if he isn’t assigned a permanent position on the forest, you might not be allowed to keep him as a pilot anyway,” said Jeff.

Wayne grumbled at the reality of the red tape associated with government employment.

“If Jack and Ennis get along, we could put them together. Might work out best for all of us,” Jeff said. “Ennis gets an old friend that he can work with, not some new guy who’s going to ask to be transferred after spendin’ a week with him. And Wayne gets to keep his Army pilot on the payroll.”

“But only if we’ll be able to get him flyin’ when we need him,” added Wayne pointedly, taking a swig of his beer.

“It’s a deal,” said Jeff, clinking his bottle with Wayne’s.

“S’alright by me. Guess we’re both lucky to have Jack on board,” said Wayne.

“Speaking of Jack, shouldn’t him and Brian be back by now?” asked Ken.

“I tried radioing them about an hour ago, no answer,” Jeff said. “They were probably still sorting shit out in the Emergency Room.”

“Why dontcha give the hospital a call, and see how the patient is doing?” Wayne asked.

Jeff ambled over to the desk and dialed the phone.

“Yeah, find out if we need to save any beer and pizza for them,” laughed Dana.

A moment later, Jeff returned to the table, his face concerned, but his voice calm, “We have a problem, folks. The chopper hasn’t arrived at BVH. I think they might have gone down.”

~~~

Jack knew it would be impossible to fall asleep. The rattle coming from his chest likely meant that he had broken a rib or two. He coughed in agony, fearing that he might have a punctured lung. He doubted he’d get much rest anyway, when he thought of his and Brian’s precarious position at the foot of an avalanche runout. He fervently hoped that the pressure that triggered the avalanche had let up enough so that the rest of the slope didn’t slide further down the mountain.

Brian shivered beside him in the frozen cockpit. At least that was a good sign. Shivering meant he was still alive. If they could make it through the night without suffering any more damage, Jack could try to fix the radio in the morning when he had some sunlight to illuminate the cockpit. Hell, who was he kidding? The radio was probably smashed to bits on the side of the mountain. He and Brian would need to prioritize what to do as soon as they got some light. And their list of priorities would have to make sense. It would be a waste of energy to comb the snowfield for parts to the shattered radio if there was no chance of getting it to work.

Jack wiped away the condensation from the cracked chopper window and wished to hell that he’d see the headlamp of a search party making its way up the mountain to rescue them. Surely by now the team at Twin Lakes would know that he and Brian had gone down. The hospital would have no record of their arrival with their rescued mountaineer. Someone would be looking for the kid—Davis, who fell on the mountain and needed their help in the first place. He had a buddy with him, according to what Wayne had told Jack back in Salida. Someone would be looking for all of them that were now missing for a half-dozen hours… wouldn’t they?

Brian shuddered convulsively. Jack chewed on his lip. He worried that Brian wouldn’t be able to help if their situation worsened. Jack gritted his teeth in resignation… as if it could get much worse than this.

Jack wanted to get a better look at Brian’s head in the morning. If he was concussed, he shouldn’t be allowed to sleep, but there was no chance of Jack convincing Brian to stay awake in their situation. He might have a more severe head injury than Jack had first determined in the feeble light of a fading sunset. That would prevent Brian from making the right decisions, and a concussion could prevent Brian from taking the necessary steps to keep Jack alive if he needed more help than Brian could give. Sometimes Jack regretted having just enough information about head trauma to make him scared.

Jack rubbed his hands together to try to restore some circulation. He had a pair of gloves in the cockpit with him, but Christ only knew where they had ended up in the avalanche. He’d look for them tomorrow, as soon as the first rays of sun crept over the horizon. For now, he had to deal with keeping his fingers from freezing. At least the remains of the chopper were well-insulated by the snow. Jack understood that the air inside an igloo or snow cave stays warmer than the air outside, and the same principle applied to the cockpit. Inside, there was no wind, and both Jack and Brian gave off some body heat that would keep them from freezing to death… at least not right away.

Outside, the wind howled. Thankfully, the snow had stopped falling sometime during the day and the sky gave way to a clear starlit night. If a rescue team had been deployed, they’d have good visibility.

Jack tried to make a mental list of the things he needed to do when he had some light. He and Brian needed to make a fire, both for warmth and to signal the rescuers. There had to be some matches in the first aid kit. Jack knew he had a lighter and a pack of cigarettes in the bag he had been traveling with in the chopper, but after the crash landing and the slide down the mountain in the avalanche, who the fuck knew where it had gone? There should be a flare kit in the cockpit, as well as enough first aid supplies to man a small field hospital. Jack would look for it at first light. If they could make a fire to stay warm, light some flares to signal their rescuers to their location, treat Brian’s head and arm, maybe wrap Jack’s ribs if they could confiscate something useable from Davis, they should be able to wait it out.

Davis.

They’d need to drag his body outside the chopper in the morning while they still had the strength to haul his dead weight around. Jack didn’t want his corpse warming up too much and putrefying inside the cockpit of the chopper. The smell would be unbearable. The destroyed aircraft was their only shelter and Jack wanted to ensure that it remained as liveable as possible.

Jack crossed his arms over his chest and shoved his hands beneath his armpits. It had been warm in the chopper when he left the Twin Lakes base with Brian, yet he had kept his parka on, knowing he’d be emerging onto a snowy mountain slope for the rescue. He thanked his lucky stars that he and Brian both had warm clothing that would help them survive the night at elevation. He remembered the altimeter reading somewhere around ten thousand feet when they dropped out of the sky. He figured they were at eight thousand now, tops. The ache in his chest made it seem like they were much higher, but he knew the cracked ribs had a way of simulating altitude sickness. The shortness of breath and wheezing was something Jack would have to deal with until he got to a hospital.

Jack knew that one of the first rules of being lost was to stay put. That held true for everyone in such a situation… unless the lost person was part of a search and rescue team. If a victim knew the terrain, if he was experienced and knowledgeable, the prevailing wisdom was to do everything he could to get himself out of his shitty situation the best way he knew how.

And Jack intended to do just that.

Jack had no intention of sitting around waiting for a medic to come to them. Jack wanted to think on his feet and do everything he could to ensure his rescue… and Brian’s. It was too late for Davis. His body had undergone too much trauma in the initial fall, and worsened by spending the night alone on the mountain wrapped in only a sleeping bag. Jack and Brian had survived the helicopter crash, but Jack feared that the avalanche might do them in. Jack shook his head. There was only so much a person could take.

Jack had plenty to think about while he couldn’t sleep. He hadn’t had a chance to think about Ennis yet, he had been so focused on getting Davis off the mountain. Then, the crash had put everything else out of his mind. But now, alone in the icy darkness, Ennis Del Mar loomed large in his thoughts. Jack couldn’t ignore the image of Ennis that burned into his mind, not even when his ribs felt like they were going to tear a hole through his lungs. The former Wyoming ranch-hand had now apparently become a USFS Ranger.

How long had it been? Four… no… nearly five years since they parted ways in Signal. Jack might have expected a favor from Ennis then, but he certainly couldn’t now. Too much time had passed since Ennis had made up his mind. He had punched Jack’s lights out, making Jack see stars during the daytime on a sunny mountainside. Jack didn’t need to be told twice. Maybe this accident… maybe this whole day full of accidents were just one big neon warning sign that told Jack to back off. Be done with Ennis Del Mar and the foolish idea that in the intervening years Ennis thought about Jack as much as Jack thought about him.

Jack wanted to punch something.

Ennis had been hell-bent on getting married as soon as they came off the mountain in ’63. For all Jack knew, he had knocked this Alma gal up and she had the presence of mind to drag Ennis off to the altar. 

Jack wondered how the hell Ennis was going to afford a wife and a kid.

Jack was sure Ennis was bluffing when he acted all high and mighty, like he shit dollar bills, when Jack offered to spot him a loan after it became apparent that Joe Aguirre had no intention of paying them for the whole summer of work. Aguirre was a tightwad, cheating the Forest Service by illegally grazing on their land, and cheating Ennis and Jack by making them bring the sheep down a month early. No snow fell on that mountain during the week that followed. No, Aguirre had seen something he didn’t like, and made up some story about a big storm coming in so he could screw them out of a month’s pay.

Jack figured out what Aguirre had seen. The next spring, right after Jack got his marching papers, he paid old Joe Aguirre a visit. He inquired about work that summer, although he knew he wouldn’t be able to evade Uncle Sam. He almost didn’t ask the real question that was on his mind, worried about what the answer might be. Instead, he steeled himself, figuring it was bad enough that he had to go off to fight a war in a foreign country but now he had no way of telling Ennis that he had enlisted or where he could find him.

“Ennis Del Mar ain’t been around, has he?”

Aguirre laid into him right then and there, calling him out for letting the dogs babysit the sheep. Jack could only imagine what else Aguirre had seen. His high-powered binoculars were hanging from a hook on the wall right next to his riding gloves. Aguirre must have tossed the binoculars into his saddlebag when he rode up the mountain to deliver news from Jack’s mother, and used the binoculars to spy on him and Ennis. Jack didn’t stick around to hear any more.

He left for Basic Training the following weekend. Lucky for him, his good old Uncle Harold knew some of the higher-ups. He pulled some strings and after a couple years, he was in flight school, training to fly a chopper. He always figured Ennis married Alma, had a carload of kids, and bought the place he had been saving up to buy. Up on Brokeback, he seemed determine not to end up like his folks, dying dirt poor with nothing more than twenty-four dollars in a coffee can to show for a lifetime of hard work. No, the Ennis that Jack knew would protect his family and provide for them at all costs. Not even a curve in the road would have changed that, if Ennis could help it.

Jack pulled the drawstring to tighten the hood of his parka more tightly around his face.

Ennis had looked downright stunned to see him again, but there was something hollow in his eyes at the same time. Jack hoped that Ennis would be able to fill in the missing pieces soon, if he and Brian ever got off this mountain.

Maybe his gal had second thoughts. Maybe they didn’t get married, after all, despite Ennis’s determination to follow through with it. Jack felt a twinge of guilt, thinking he might have played a role in wrecking some of the plans Ennis had made with his bride-to-be. But it felt wrong for Jack to take all the blame for leading Ennis astray. No, Ennis had that seed planted in himself from long before he had met Jack. Jack just nurtured the seed into a sprout of something that could be, if Ennis would just let it take root, but that punch ended everything. The new growth was clipped off dead, before it began to flower.

~~~

After the girls were tucked into bed, Alma bid Laurie and K.E. goodnight. She left them curled up on the couch together. Alma paused in the kitchen to grab the newspaper, before descending the stairs to the rumpus room where she made her bed.

Upon the psychedelic bedspread, she spread the paper open to the classified section. Her eyes scanned each column, looking for a “Help Wanted-Female” ad that described something Alma could do. 

While scanning the ads for salesladies, for maids, teachers, and a bookkeeper, her mind wandered to the subject she had been thinking about before Laurie had called her to dinner.

Dan Donovan.

Although Dan was a year younger than Alma and one grade behind, he was nearly six feet tall at sixteen years of age. He seamlessly blended in with the Juniors and Seniors, despite only being a sophomore. With curly black hair and horn-rimmed glasses, he wasn’t the best looking boy at Riverton High School, but he was a living breathing male. That was good enough for Alma.

Alma was thrilled when he asked her to the dance. She hoped that this would be her opportunity to disprove her mother’s statement that no boys had come knocking on her door. Although this was only one boy, and he was younger than her, it still counted as one huge checkmark on the invisible chart where Alma imagined her mother evaluated her worth.

Alma’s clothes usually came from the five and dime. Simple skirts and plain blouses, one in every color, made up the bulk of her wardrobe. She was up the creek without a paddle if she needed anything fancier than that. In addition to the inexpensive clothes, her mother also sewed many jumpers and dresses for Alma and Ava both, matching their outfits from Simplicity patterns that she could use again and again. The larger versions of the outfits could be passed down to Ava when they were outgrown, so the younger Beers sister wore the same fashion a second time. Functionality always outweighed style in Ann Beer’s mind. Alma was secretly glad that Ava didn’t attend the same school as she. Their six year age difference was enough to keep her and Ava apart for all of their schooling; Alma had moved to the Junior High School by the time Ava was ready to begin first grade. Still, Alma prayed that no one would recognize her little sister wearing a miniature version of the outfit that Alma had worn to school.

When the day of the dance finally came, Alma was excited. Her mother acted wary, but Alma thought she was secretly thrilled that someone had finally picked her ugly daughter to take on a date. Alma was delighted to learn that Ann had generously made Alma a new skirt for the dance. White, and made of lightweight wool, the skirt flared dramatically when Alma spun around to practice the twirls and dips of the dances that would take place at the Riverton Elks Lodge. Alma stood in the mirror admiring her reflection while she shimmied her hips as quickly as she could.

A light blue blouse with a high collar and white kitten heels completed Alma’s outfit. Alma stared into the mirror as she pressed her palms to her chest, smoothing down the fabric of the blouse to make certain there was no hint of her breasts that lay below, no chance of any skin being exposed by an errant buttonhole.

Satisfied that nothing could be misconstrued from her attire, Alma waited for Dan to arrive. She nervously paced the upstairs landing while the seconds ticked down on the clock in the hallway. Ann had gone to the trouble of making sure that Mr. Beers came home from work early for this momentous occasion. It wasn’t every day that their daughter went on a date. Even Ava was dressed nicely and sitting on the couch with her hands folded waiting for Dan’s arrival.

In the upstairs hallway, Alma paced the creaking floor, anxious that Dan might have realized that he had made a terrible mistake. She was almost certain that he wasn’t going to show up. Why would he, when there were so many girls at school who were more attractive than Alma? She was certain that Dan would come to his senses and call with an excuse of too much homework, or a terrible traffic accident, or an emergency that rendered him unavailable. No boy would be interested in Alma. Her mother was right all along.

When Alma heard the sounds of tires on gravel as a car turn into their driveway, she was so relieved that she almost passed out. Her sweaty hands fidgeted with the strap of her purse. Downstairs, Dan’s father and Mr. Beers exchanged pleasantries while Ann called for Alma to come downstairs to greet her date. Alma took each step slowly, worried about the things her parents might say to Dan before she reached the landing. Her biggest worry was that this was all a dream—that no boy would, in fact, knock on her door… that her chance for her mother to see her in a different light was lost. She would awaken from this perfect dream.

But here was Dan. Alma was over the moon. She felt vindicated.

Mr. Donovan drove Alma and Dan to the dance, dropping them off at the front entrance to the Elks Lodge where a horde of other students had gathered. When Mr. Donovan promised to pick the kids up at ten o’clock, Alma could have sworn she saw him wink at his son.

Inside, Alma and Dan quickly went their separate ways, Dan with his sophomore friends, and Alma with Janet, Lou-Anne, and Denise. The girls giggled and admired each other’s dresses and pointed out which boy had escorted them to the dance. The long line of boys sat unamused in folding chairs against the far wall of the dance hall.

Alma and Janet mingled with the classmates and snacked on the fancy hors d’oeuvres that were laid out for the students. Concerned about her white skirt, Alma carefully sipped the red fruit juice punch that was sure to stain terribly.

It was not until the music began that Alma saw Dan again. He straightened his tie and sauntered across the room, leaving most of the boys in their folding chairs.

“So, Alma,” he said. “Do you wanna dance?”

Alma let him lead her onto the dance floor as the band began to play.

“Heavenly shades of night are falling,” the singer crooned the lyrics to Twilight Time.

The top of Alma’s head barely reached Dan’s chest while they danced. As the song wore on, Alma stared at the crisp white fabric of his shirt. She tried to avoid tilting her neck back to look directly at Dan as she had seen the other girls do with their partners, worried about what she might see there. All of the couples took a step backwards when the slow song ended, afraid of touching their dance partners further, lest they be reprimanded by the watchful chaperones.

Alma was extra cautious. For all she knew, her mother had specifically directed the chaperones to keep an eye on her behavior. It wouldn’t be the first time that Alma suspected Ann of deploying spies to check on her daughter. She was fond of testing Alma to see if she behaved respectably. She was forever quizzing other parents about Alma after she had been invited to a sleepover, questioning the nuns at summer Bible school to see if Alma obeyed their rules, and asking teachers if Alma behaved in a way that was becoming for a young lady. These experiences made Alma distraught and fearful of doing something that would land her in Hell. She straightened her back and stiffened her shoulders with caution, whenever a chaperone approached, knowing that their eyes were just as watchful as her mother’s.

As the night went on, the music got faster and louder. Surrounded by friends, the couple worked themselves into a frenzy, dancing to the fast-paced songs like The Twist, Itsy Bitsy Teeny Weeny Yellow Polka Dot Bikini, and Wild One. The music was louder than any Alma had ever heard before. She thought her mother surely wouldn’t approve. She was somewhat relieved when the band finally tired of the wild pace and opted to play a slower song.

“It’s now or never,” the singer began in a poor imitation of Elvis. “Come hold me tight.” 

Dan guided Alma around the dance floor as the strains of the music wafted through the air.

“Kiss me my darling, be mine tonight.”

“Let’s go get some punch,” Dan said after the song ended.

“Okay,” Alma said, wiping her brow daintily with a white glove from her purse.

Dan pushed his glasses up on his nose and took Alma’s arm.

The couple stopped at the punch bowl and Dan carefully ladled a cupful for Alma and one for himself. In the far corner of the room, some seats sat empty, so they headed over to rest for a while before venturing back onto the dance floor.

“I hope you’re having fun,” Dan said, when they were seated.

“I am,” Alma said. She could hardly believe she was at a real dance with a real live band and a real date.

Dan chewed on his bottom lip as if he had something he wanted to say.

Before Alma knew what was happening, Dan speared his fingers awkwardly into Alma’s hair and leaned forward to kiss her cheek.

“Dan!” Alma shouted in surprise. She jerked backwards, nearly spilling the punch all over her white skirt. “What are you doing?”

“Why, I was only trying to give you a kiss, Alma,” Dan said.

Alma was appalled. A kiss! That was the sort of thing that only married folks did, and even then, they would have the decency to not do it with all these people around.

“I don’t like that very much,” Alma said, furious at everything this kiss implied. “What’s gotten into you?”

“Gee, Alma,” Dan said. “It’s not like I go around just kissing any old girl. I figured we were on a date and I’d give it a try.”

“You thought you’d give it a try with me?” Alma asked. She had put down the cup of punch on the edge of the empty seat beside her and she now angrily clung to her purse strap.

“Well, I’ve never tried kissing a girl before,” Dan said.

“Never before?” asked Alma. “I should hope not!”

Alma had thought that Dan was a good Christian from a church-going family. She was sure that her mother would approve of Dan and would no longer chastise her for not attracting a boy, but now this—this attempt at violating Alma’s chastity meant all bets were off.

“But I would like to kiss a girl… someday…” Dan replied. “I was hoping it would be you.”

Alma was affronted. Did Dan not understand that Alma wasn’t the kind of girl who would just go around kissing a boy without some rules in place?

“Maybe when you’re married, you can think about things like this,” Alma said. “But certainly not now.”

“Well, if not now, when?” Dan asked sheepishly, his hands in his pockets. “I’m sixteen now. I was sorta hopin I’d kiss a girl by the time I’m seventeen.”

“Seventeen?” Alma asked. “Why that’s just next year.”

“Next year, it is,” Dan said hopefully, as if he had firmly etched this milestone in his mind as one of life’s greatest accomplishments. “Don’t you think you would want to kiss someone by the time you are eighteen?”

Alma’s heart beat faster, her skin flushed. She wanted to scream her answer to him in frustration. Why were they even talking about this when there were so many other things to discuss, like the math test they took today, and if Dan was going to work on a ranch this summer, or if he was going to try to take some classes at night school, and how on earth was he going to be able to provide for a family if he started down the path of kissing? There were too many plans to make about how he would provide for a family of his own before he kissed Alma.

Alma was beside herself.

On the one hand, she was shocked that Dan Donovan tried to kiss her and all that it implied, but on the other hand, she needed to prove that she could attract a boy to live up to her mother’s expectations. This date brought Alma one step closer to the dream that her mother had for her. Her mother would be so proud if Alma could attract Dan, but then it all fell apart when he did the unthinkably forward act of trying to kiss her.

What if he wanted her to touch him like Bradley McBurney did Margaret Quinn?

Was that what would have happened next?

Would Alma then be forced to let Dan look inside her underwear, something just like Janet assured her would happen—something that she had been taught to never touch, look at, or even think about as long as she lived?

Alma was a nervous wreck, afraid that her mother would catch her doing something sinful. She feared that at any moment, her mother was going to run into the dance hall with the archangel Michael at her heels, ready to stab Alma for behaving like a dirty girl.

And Dan… he was a sinner just like every other boy she knew. Just like every man whose life’s goal was to make girls like Alma disobey the rules they had been taught.

The music stopped, and Alma ran outside the dance hall with tears falling from her eyes.

Dan tried to go after her, but Janet stopped him.

In the parking lot, Alma leaned against the door of the nearest car and sobbed uncontrollably.

Janet had followed her out of the dance hall. She gave Alma’s shoulder a shake and asked, “Alma, what’s wrong?”

Alma wouldn’t say a word. She knew Janet would think it was silly of her to have avoided Dan’s advances. Janet didn’t see things the same way Alma did. She never did. But Alma knew the truth. If she kissed a boy, there was a huge problem with it.

She’d have to make him promise to marry her first.

~~~


	9. Chapter 9

_I’ll awake to the song of the thrush in the tree, exultant at daylight’s return_

With the sun’s rise in the east, each day on the planet begins as it has since the dawn of time. The earth’s slow and steady spin allows each ray of sunlight to caress the water, the clouds, the land, and its inhabitants. The winds blow as air heats and rises, cools and sinks.

With each new day, the thoughts of man skip like a stone atop the water. Each time the flat stone strikes the smooth surface, it has an opportunity to change direction, to take a new path. Whether the new path will be more beneficial than the steady course that a solitary man has planned will not be known until the stone sinks to the bottom, the path determined. A new path is impossible to choose at life’s end, when the stone stutters with weight and loss of momentum.

With a swirl of misty air, new love breathes life into man’s tired lungs. Where once he thought the air had stagnated and no breath of spring’s bloom would carry on the wind, the rays of sun warm his skin, move his soul. The dark clouds of past terrors dissipate when man’s heart finds the one he loves. No storm is too much to weather once the beloved is found, once a person finds the one who sees with the same eyes and feels the same sensations with a pulse beneath his fingertips.

As the planet rotates, the waves of wind wash over the land, scouring through every valley, rushing over every hill. The land slides beneath the wind that sways the top of every tree. Over deserts, over forests, over cities, the wind moves across the land. No twig, no blossom, no blade of grass remains untouched by its force. As gentle as a kitten’s breath or as powerful as a hurricane, nothing on the land is unaffected by its power or its grace. Soils erode, mountains are built, dunes form across the surface of the planet, shifting and shaping not to man’s whim, but to the whim of the wind and the planetary rotation that allows it to carve a home.

What great dramas have played out among the inhabitants of this tiny planet tucked into the corner of the solar system? What significance does each individual’s tragedy etch upon the universe as a whole?

There are no greater problems than those that are suffered alone. Simple hopes are meaningless, unless you are the human affected by their loss. But hope alone is not enough to change the path that follows the sun and leads man into the next tragic day.

~~~

Ennis tried to relax and catch a nap. The activities of the day, coupled with a cold beer, should have sent him straight to sleep. But he tossed and turned, finally giving up after a noble attempt. He took a deep breath and silently resolved to open his eyes, make something for dinner, and radio headquarters to find out how Davis had fared at the hospital. Then, maybe he’d ask if Jack was around.

Ennis put his feet on the floor and rocked his head from side to side, stretching the muscles in his neck, thinking of what he would say first. The good and the bad all threatened to erupt from him at once. He had wanted to have this same conversation years earlier, when he thought Jack Twist might have some answers for why his life had turned out the way it had. Maybe he could finally get those answers now.

He gathered his sleep-mussed hair into a ponytail and secured it with a rubber band.

“Here goes nothin’,” Ennis pressed the button on the radio and spoke. “Jeff? Come in, Jeff.”

“Yeah, Ennis? I was just about to call you,” Jeff’s voice crackled through the radio.

“Hey Jeff, I was wondering how that rescue worked out, and if I could talk to Jack, if he’s still there?” Ennis asked.

“Well, that’s what I was callin’ you about,” Jeff said carefully. “Something happened. The chopper didn’t make it to BVH. I figure it musta went down somewhere between the rescue location and Route 82.”

Ennis almost dropped the handset. “What? What do you mean it went down?” he asked.

“I called BVH. They never showed at the landing pad,” Jeff said. “Brian has been to BVH a thousand times, and the skies were clearing when they took off from the mountain. No show. Their radio was working fine when we last saw them, but it’s dead now. From the highway to BVH, it’s all residential. He had to have gone down somewhere between where we last saw him and the highway or we woulda heard somethin’ by now.”

Ennis’s mind was reeling. He choked out, exasperated, “Well, shouldn’t we be goin’ out? What are ya doin’ about this?”

“I got it under control. I sent the guys home ta get a good night’s sleep, and we’ll head out again at first light,” Jeff said.

“Shit, Jeff, they could be dead by morning. Dontcha think we could do something about it sooner?” Ennis asked.

“You know we ain’t got the manpower. I can’t be risking staff by sendin’ them out in the dark when they’re exhausted ta begin with,” Jeff said. “Not like they’ll be able to do anything in the dark.”

“Well, it don’t seem right ta leave them out there,” Ennis said. “They could be injured. They have no overnight supplies. Ya can’t just leave them, we gotta do something.” Ennis was getting more frustrated by the minute.

“We will—in the morning,” Jeff said. “We’re going to head up toward the ravines and search each one. Jim Nueve will do a flyover first thing, and let us know if he sees any sign of them. It’s been planned out. If they’re not on a ridge, we’re gonna search each of the three ravines, one at a time. We’ll find them.”

“Hey,” Ennis said, “it’s just an idea, but what if I was to head out now? I could get a fix on whether they’re in the easternmost ravine, closest to where I am, anyway. That way you won’t waste time searchin’ there in the morning, if I find it’s all clear.”

“Ennis, you know I don’t want any man out there alone. What are you gonna do by yourself? Don’t lose your marbles just because this fella is a friend of yours. You know the protocol,” Jeff said.

Ennis’s head swam with the irony of the situation. _First I lost Jack when we came off the mountain. Then I think I lost him fer forever. Now, I find him again, and lose him again in the same day, maybe really forever this time. What if he’s hurt? What is he’s freezing? What if he’s… No, I don’t even want ta think about him bein’ dead. Already went through that once. Don’t wanna do it again. And besides, everyone been raving all day about how well he flew that piece of junk. He’s gotta be okay. He’s gotta be._

“Just let me set out a little distance, Jeff. To get a feel for where they may _not_ be. No harm in that,” Ennis pleaded.

“No, Ennis. I need you to stay put. Wayne is confident that Jack landed the chopper just fine. I know it sucks, but they’re gonna hafta wait out the night. I can’t go riskin’ the lives of the men who have been out on the mountain all day already, and I’m not gonna risk yours, bud,” Jeff said.

“Alright, then,” Ennis sighed, unhappily relenting. “I guess I see yer point.”

“I’ll radio ya in the morning and let ya know where we want to meet up,” Jeff said. “Try to get some sleep.”

“Okay, Jeff. Goodnight,” Ennis said, releasing the button to end their communication.

When he was sure the radio was off, Ennis kicked the wall. The splintered hardwood was unforgiving. He stormed around the cabin. Everything seemed so unfair. He had been given a second chance to have all his questions answered. And now, he was forbidden to go look for Jack. Worst of all, he knew Jeff was right. A big part of Ennis believed that he should stay put and wait for the call in the morning. Saying no, violating his supervisor’s orders, was never part of Ennis’s vocabulary, no matter what the job.

Ennis tried to settle down for the night, but he couldn’t stop thinking about scouring the nearby ravine.

_Jack Fuckin’ Twist. He best be alive. But I need ta straighten him out about things. Gotta remember he doesn’t know what went on after... He probly thinks I never bothered to look for him after everthing that happened. Probly thinks I forgot all about him. Thinks I don’t remember. Shit, no telling what the man must think of me now._

Ennis remembered standing on the porch in Lightning Flat like it was yesterday. It had taken everything he had to put aside his fears of what he might learn and walk to the dingy front door. The snow had just started falling, the flakes coming straight down from the sky on a spring day when there was no wind on the Wyoming plain.

If things happened differently, maybe he would have punched Jack’s lights out then, blamed Jack for what happened between him and Alma. That would have been a fine resolution, according to Ennis back on that day.

Or maybe he would have found Jack alone. They might have gotten to talking. Jack could likely have dragged the words out of Ennis then, talked some sense into him, nice and easy. They could have both discovered some other truths, when there was still time to do something about it.

But that wasn’t how it went. That wasn’t how it went at all.

Ennis was greeted by a pair of blue eyes, just a shade lighter than Jack’s. He had already heard some stories about the old man, and he had hoped not to be alone with him. He had no desire to suffer his wrath.

“Yeah?” he asked, opening the door to the white house at the end of a dead end street.

“Uh, Mr. Twist, I’m Ennis Del Mar, a friend of Jack’s from over the summer. I was wonderin’ if he was home?” Ennis asked, trying to be as sociable as possible.

“Ain’t here,” Twist said, his voice clipped, eyes raking over Ennis as he stood on the front porch.

Ennis was hoping for Jack to be at the Twist ranch when he risked making the long trip in his shitty old truck. Jack did say he would be helping his daddy over the winter when they separated in Signal. Ennis assumed he helped his daddy every winter. The place sure looked like it needed it. “Well, do you know when he’ll be back?”

“What you want him for?” Twist jerked his chin at Ennis.

“Uh, well, like I said, we was friends, and—”

“Fella like him,” Twist interrupted, his voice snide. “That sort of fella, don’t got no friends.”

Ennis clenched his fists that he had stuffed down into the pockets of his old jacket. Twist didn’t seem to be helping Ennis along at all. He was certainly no chatterbox like his son.

Ennis gave a confused smile, “Well, I was a friend to him, over the summer.”

“You’re one of those cocksucking faggots like him, aren’t you?” Twist said with a sneer.

Ennis’s eyes widened and he drew in a breath that caught halfway into his lungs. He could barely move. He wanted to puke. The events of his failed marriage, and his need to find Jack to sort things out, weighed heavily on his mind already. The last thing he needed was some old bigot to call him the names he already called himself.

Never one to back down from a challenge, Ennis’s jaw tightened and he took a step forward to where Twist was still hunched in the doorway. “Sir, I don’t mean you no disrespect. Just lookin’ fer Jack,” Ennis said.

And then, as if things couldn’t have gotten any worse, Twist dropped the bomb. “Died in Vietnam,” he said, without shifting his steely gaze.

Ennis could hardly believe what he had heard. He stumbled backward off the porch, feeling sick. Twist retreated into the house and closed the door behind him. Ennis buckled over, putting his hands on his knees, heaving air into his lungs. Somehow, he managed to get back into the truck.

A thin layer of snow had already settled on the windshield by the time Ennis recovered enough to put the truck in gear. Jack was dead. No way to get anything right after that.

Not until now.

“Fuckin’ bastard,” Ennis pinched the bridge of his nose, remembering old man Twist’s words that had colored his memories of Jack for the past five years. “He ain’t gonna win.”

Ennis assembled his backpack for the second time in the same day. If it were anyone else, Ennis would have agreed wholeheartedly with Jeff’s mandate. But this was Jack Twist who was somewhere on the mountain, and Ennis would be damned if he was going to leave him there. Not after just finding out Jack was alive when he’d thought he was dead for so many years.

He tossed a few chunks of wood into the stove and watched the firelight fill the cabin. Ennis knew he wouldn’t be able to live with himself if he didn’t attempt to find Jack, and learn what his own future might be like.

He grabbed his pack and opened the door, flipping his headlamp on. The light illuminated the darkness outside, the snowy landscape sparkling in the beam. He braced himself against the cold. The unbroken route headed south, two miles over the ridge and into the next ravine, where Jack might be. As much as he wanted to blame Jack for fucking up his life, and as much as he hated going against his supervisor’s orders, he couldn’t refuse the call. He had to go looking for Jack now.

Shoving his mittened hands through the loops of his ski poles, he breathed in the chilly air and whispered into the silence, “I’m nothing.”

Shaking his head slowly back and forth, his light made the tree shadows long and the unseen places grow darker, “I’m nowhere,” he said, swallowing hard. “But without you, I might be even less.”

He plodded down the stone steps and headed into the night woods, pointing his snowshoes uphill.

~~~

Jack was startled awake by the sound of rustling nearby. He opened his eyes, and after a moment of being disoriented, he realized the sound was only Brian moving around beneath the tarp.

He sighed and fell back asleep.

Jack was one of those people who always slept soundly, despite waking up in a strange place, at a strange time, and with strange people around him.

From his experiences in the world of competitive rodeo and in the far-flung places he toured in the Army, he had spent a lot of time sleeping in strange places. He never knew what he’d find when he woke up in Basic Training, or the first time he was away on his own in a foreign land, without the reassuring sound of his mother’s voice in the next room.

On the rodeo circuit, Jack had gotten used to sleeping with guys in a cheap two-bit bunkhouse. All he needed was a roof over his head. Sometimes, he didn’t even need that. When he herded sheep up on Brokeback in ’62, he learned what it was like to sleep out under the stars. A steady wind and the coyote’s yelps lulled him to sleep. His experiences in that tender summer, when he was only an eighteen year-old boy, undoubtedly shaped his future sleeping patterns.

The following year, when he joined the rodeo and tried to make a living riding the bulls, he learned that failure to make an eight second ride meant that he couldn’t afford a single room. He had to share with others who sought respite from the cares of the rodeo world for a half-dozen hours or so. He and his fellow competitors found themselves in rickety bunks with poorly-insulated walls. Mice ran over their feet. If they were unfortunate enough to have brought a morsel of food with them, perhaps some crackers to snack on in the night, or a package of carefully wrapped homemade cookies from a sweetheart, they’d awaken in the morning to find the package gnawed through by vermin. A trail of crumbs would be strewn across a strange floor in a strange town, where the bunkhouse-mates didn’t bother to wake the new guy when his food was being scarfed down by rodents.

The bunkhouse-mates woke Jack up unintentionally plenty of times. With snorts and guffaws, snores and coughs, and the frequent moans of someone taking himself in hand to ward off the loneliness of having no one to touch them for weeks on end.

During his second summer on Brokeback, he slept easily to the sway of the pines and the bird’s call overhead. The wind became a part of the night, so he slept lulled by its simple song and the crackle of a campfire as it burned to coals. When the heat became too much, he retired to the tent and was awoken by a lover’s sigh and the smack of lips against the back of his neck, the slap of balls against his own, and the moans of a love that went unsaid.

Later on, in the Army, he slept in barracks with his team. He had moved through the ranks, eventually earning his pilot’s credentials. He had his Uncle Harold to thank for that. Still the screams of the wounded would come from the medical tent. No matter how tired he was, how tired any of the men were, they couldn’t sleep through an amputation with a minimum of anesthesia or the wailing of a team member that couldn’t be ignored, such was their distress.

So, it was no surprise to Jack that he could ignore Brian’s snores, followed by the rustling as the tarp slid across Brian’s body while he sought to make himself more comfortable. It wasn’t that Brian was selfish, it was just the effect of sleep on his injured and drained body that made him noisily restless. Jack knew Brian shouldn’t have been sleeping anyway. If he stayed awake, Jack would be able to monitor the severity of his concussion and determine what course of action to take. Of course, on the side of a goddamn mountain, it wasn’t as if Jack could treat a concussion anyway.

“Did I wake you up from your beauty sleep?” Jack asked when he saw Brian struggling to free himself from the tarp.

“You’re a funny guy,” Brian said, wincing over his broken arm in the darkness.

“You don’t know the half of it,” Jack chuckled. His cracked ribs pained him when he breathed.

“I need to take a leak,” Brian said.

From the sound of things on Brian’s side of the cockpit, Jack assumed that Brian was struggling to his feet.

“Here, I’ll give you a hand,” Jack said, crawling across the chunks of snow that littered the metallic liner of the cockpit.

Holding onto the cockpit frame, he dragged himself to his feet and helped Brian to get himself upright. His eyes had adjusted well to the darkness, and he benefitted from the stars and moon that vaguely illuminated the snow.

“This looks as good a place as any,” Jack said.

At one end of the cockpit, the air rushed through a thin crack in the torn metal wall. Beyond the wall, a snowbank had pushed against the chopper where part of the wall was missing, ripped off in the avalanche. Jack held the frame with one hand, his bloody nails stinging from being torn the day before. He raised his foot to kick an opening into the snow. It was no military latrine, but it was the best he could do for himself and Brian.

Jack got his pants out of the way and pissed long into the patch of snow.

Brian had been struggling because of his arm, but he managed to follow Jack’s lead before collapsing back onto the tarp.

“My watch stopped,” Brian said, tapping at his wrist before wrapping the tarp around himself.

“Do you really want to know?” Jack asked.

“I’m afraid to ask,” Brian said.

Jack looked at his watch, surprised that it was only 2:00 AM.

“Two,” Jack said.

“It’s going to be a long night,” Brian said.

Jack silently agreed. Before he closed his eyes, he took one last look through the torn metal of the cockpit, wishing he could see dawn break on the horizon.

~~~


	10. Chapter 10

_And the bond will be strong when he’s singing for me that paean for which ever I yearn_

When morning broke, Alma lay in the daybed that Laurie had made up for her in the rumpus room. The old mattress creaked when she shifted to make herself more comfortable. With pride, Laurie had told Alma that she had purchased the bed at a tag sale for only ten dollars, thinking it would come in handy if a friend or relative visited, or if the girls wanted to have a sleepover when they got older.

Ava had many sleepovers when she was a child, Alma remembered. Alma, not so much. It wasn’t fun to have to share a room with her younger sister who was always meddling in the conversations that should have been reserved for older girls.

Ava had been an intrusion into most aspects of Alma’s life.

Alma had the misfortune of being born early in the month, the fifth of September. Year after year, by the time Labor Day weekend had ended, it finally dawned on her relatives that they had missed Alma’s birthday while they were celebrating one last weekend of summer. Ava was born in the same month, six years later, but on the twenty-third. If Alma had dared to think about it, she would have realized that the winter of 1950 must have been a cold one.

But Alma’s mind didn’t work like that.

Still, she had to share her birthday parties with Ava. Because her birthday fell later in the month, Alma’s birthday was always recognized late, sometimes weeks after the actual date had passed. She’d wonder every birthday morning if this would be the year that she got to be admired and applauded alone, on her own merits. But that day never came. She shared in the festivities of the day with Ava, although she was six years her senior.

The birthday parties were a nightmare for Alma. Ann Beers never understood that a teenager might not want to celebrate her birthday at a party that had been planned to accommodate Ava and her friends as well. Alma seldom invited her peers to her party, sparing them the mandatory interactions with her much younger sister.

Alma cursed the day when her parents returned home from the hospital with baby Ava.

It was a day she would never forget. She had been the apple of her parent’s eye, or so she thought, until that one day a couple weeks after her sixth birthday when she was greeted by her grandma sitting on her bed as she awoke.

Little Alma had been snug beneath her covers, dreaming of the fun she was having in her first weeks of school. She had just started first grade at Riverton Elementary School and she so wanted to please her parents by being a good student.

What had begun as a normal Friday night, turned into a nightmare on Saturday morning. When Alma awoke to her grandma in her room, her parents were gone. It was quite unlike the Beers parents to venture off into the night without explanation.

“Why are you here, Grandma?” Alma said with a pout. She blinked her eyes open to the morning light, surprised that he grandma was at her house and sitting at the side of her bed.

“Everything is fine, Alma,” Grandma reassured her.

“I want to go tell Mama good morning,” Alma said, kicking off her covers.

“No,” Grandma said. “It’s Saturday morning. There’s no need to get out of bed so early.”

“Saturday, we have no school,” Alma said. “I want to make cookies with Mama.”

“No, Alma, Mama isn’t here,” Grandma said.

Alma wanted to cry. She had always helped her mother to bake cookies on Saturday mornings. Her mother would bring them to the Ladies Auxiliary meeting on Saturday night. Her mother even told her that someday she could go along to the meetings. Until then, Alma would settle for a taste of the raw cookie dough as he mother scraped the bowl, or a sweet cookie that cooled on the rack, its edges brown and crispy.

“Where’s Mama?” Alma asked, with tears in her eyes.

“Don’t worry,” Grandma said. “She and Daddy went to the hospital to pick out a new baby. They will be back in a few days.”

Alma couldn’t believe her ears.

“A new baby?” she asked.

“Yes, they are going to bring home a new baby sister for you. She’ll be just beautiful. Wait until you see her,” Grandma said.

But Alma didn’t want to see her. What horrible thing had Alma done that she was now no longer good enough to be the only little girl in the Beers’ house? Alma thought her chest would explode. She lay back down in bed. She had obviously done something terribly bad, bad enough to make her parents want to replace her with this beautiful new baby. Even if Alma protested, they’d still go right ahead with their plans. Alma had no say. There was nothing she could do to stop them.

She wondered if her mother had shown any signs that she wanted another baby to replace Alma. She knew that she had been a sinful girl in the past, but she had hoped that by trying to do well in school and by obeying her mother’s every order, she had redeemed herself at least a little bit. Apparently it wasn’t true. Her mother had obviously convinced her father that Alma needed to be replaced. He had agreed. And off they went to the hospital to select a new baby. Probably one that would be better than Alma, she was sure of it.

And then, Ava proved her right.

Ava was better than Alma ever could have been. Ann reminded Alma about it nearly every day from then on.

Ann fawned over baby Ava like she was the most precious thing ever, while Alma was informed of her new responsibility to set a good example for her baby sister. It was a task at which Alma would certainly fail. She wanted nothing to do with the little baby who stole her mother’s affections.

When Alma was in second grade, her teacher read a story to the class. The storybook was old, one of these ancient volumes that had been passed down from decade to decade on the public school library’s shelf. The story Alma remembered was about a woman who was barren. No children would grow in her womb.

The woman prayed and prayed that she would be granted the ability to have babes of her own and in the end, her wishes were granted. She was rewarded with children as plentiful as the seeds of the pomegranate, with its sweet red arils that tasted like candy at Christmastime.

Alma tugged the psychedelic-patterned bedspread up to her chin. She was thankful that she would never be that woman. She never wanted children, let alone more than one. She doubted that she could ever bring herself to break her promise of being a chaste and obedient girl, by committing the act that would enable her to have even a single baby of her own. She shuddered. Surely she couldn’t bring herself to do it one time, let alone the many times that the pomegranate seeds foretold in the story.

“Auntie Alma?” a tiny voice called from the door at the top of the stairs.

Alma flinched. “Yes, sweetie?” she replied. It was Lisa, of course. Alma recognized her voice.

“Are you awake yet?” Lisa asked.

“I am,” Alma said. “Do you want to come down here to see me?”

Alma was greeted good morning by Lisa’s bright smile. She smiled back at her, hoping that Lisa would never feel the same way about Linda as Alma felt about Ava.

~~~

Across the hills and through the valleys, old mountain paths weave their way through the Colorado Rockies. Ancient Indian hunting grounds, where the buffalo once roamed, provide a starting point for the trails that lead the way up the ledgy outcrops and to the summits beyond.

In the lower elevations, the woodland paths meander over valleys and hills, searching out their tame destinations, oblivious to the plans that caused them to exist. When the warmth of the spring air melts the snow, turning the near-glacial ice into a trickle that becomes a stream, the water crowds the trail. The rush of snowmelt erodes the treadways, removing the dirt and stones that make up the footpath. On its meandering route through the woods, the trail jumps the stream on a firmly planted boulder or a well-placed plank for a bridge. Still, the pathway leads on, to the same place that the trail builders traveled before modern hikers sought out the winding paths.

In the early days, the path was but a worn string of footprints, which tamped down grasses as each new hunter sought his way. Over time, the way became more defined. The footprints sunk into the muddy treadway, which was dampened by the rains and the flow of the ever-eroding stream that swept away the fragile stones. Animal tracks could be readily seen, but the mud and muck slowed man’s progress and he had to find new ways to make the trails navigable.

He built drainage to divert the water from the trail. He moved the trail to higher ground, using the power of his own two hands to redirect nature. When his work was completed, a dry route stretched to the horizon. He could follow where it led, or he could make new paths. The choice was his alone.

The mountain spirits smiled down on him as he sought to reach their lofty heights. He climbed higher, until he needed to mar the peaks with metal plates and screws to hold him to the stony spires. When winter came, he donned snowshoes and crampons, an ice axe in his hand. He followed the routes to the summits that his predecessors could not attain. Up to the sky, up to the heavens that would send lightning and ice storms to undermine his progress. When at the end of his journey, he stood atop the distant peak that he once beheld from the ground, he could look onto the vast earth below him and feel a little closer to God.

~~~

Ennis trudged through the deep snow. His headlamp illuminated the hillside. A thousand sparkling lights flashed back at him with every step, frozen crystals as numerous as grains of sand. The spotlight revealed new terrain with every step forward. Better yet, each step he took brought Ennis closer to finding Jack… at least he hoped so.

The winter woods always comforted Ennis. He liked feeling as if he was the only person in the world, awake in the pre-dawn hours and tramping about in the quiet. It made him feel calm and in control. He never understood folks who feared being alone in the wilderness. As long as you knew what you were doing and were comfortable doing it, the solitude was a pleasant alternative to the daily grind. It sure beat dealing with tourists.

Ennis stopped to remove his parka. His exertions were warming him from the inside out, and he was too hot. He rolled the USFS issued garment into a ball to compress the down before stuffing into his pack.

Even before he started the trek up the first ridge, his legs were exhausted from the rescue earlier in the day. He stopped to breathe between each step, resting his aching quadriceps. He let himself imagine that he would see Jack and Brian making their way downhill with the litter carrying Davis. It put his mind in a hopeful state.

The terrain lay wide open in the moonlight when he reached the top of the ridge. He decided that shouting would not cause a snowslide or trigger an avalanche in this, the shallowest of the three ravines.

“Jaaaack!” he called at the top of his lungs, although it was probably pointless to try to call him when he had no idea where he was stranded. The name almost sounded foreign, spoken aloud after all these years.

He paused to listen after he yelled, straining to hear Jack’s return call. Only the wind swirling down the mountainside answered him.

Ennis plodded along the ridgetop. He stopped every hundred steps to call into the night air, just in case there was a reply from Jack. He didn’t dare turn on the walkie-talkie, in case Jeff wanted to give him hell for taking off in the night when he specifically told him to stay put.

After more than an hour of hard work, Ennis reached the head of the first ravine, leaving a tamped track of snowshoe prints behind him. At least the return trip would be easier. He stopped to gulp down some coffee from his Thermos. The caffeine would re-energize him while he figured out what he wanted to do next, now that he had reached a decision point.

If he continued along the ridge and dropped into the second valley, there was a chance that he would find Jack there. The other alternative was to go back to his cabin and wait until he could either join the SAR team in the morning, or monitor their progress. He didn’t want to turn back. The pull he felt was strong, an inexplicable force. He wanted to be the first one to find Jack and help him off the mountain, to be able to speak to him, to let him know what had happened with Alma, to let him know that Jack was never far from his mind.

He finished his coffee, saving half for the return trip. His steps sunk into the snow as he trudged downhill, the worst of the climb behind him for now. The snow was deeper on this side of the ridge. It was going to be a bitch to climb back up the hill, whether he had broken in a single track with his snowshoes or not.

He plunged through the snow, thick like mashed potatoes. _Good for building a snowman, he mused. We could make one outside the cabin. Use one of Jack’s old hats to top it off._ His imagination soared with thoughts of sneaking up behind Jack and pulling him down into the deep snow. Hands tangling in his hair and hot mouth running down his neck. Grabbing his ass and grinding into him, while he pretended to struggle and get away.

Sweat ran down the back of Ennis’s neck. He gathered his scraggly ponytail with his thumbs and freed the trapped hair from between his neck and the collar of his wool jacket.

Each step he took brought him closer to Jack, but further away from the security of his cabin.

~~~


	11. Chapter 11

_Then I’ll seek out that most perfect valley of all that I’ve pictured so long in my mind_

Jack’s eyes fluttered open in the early morning light. Brian was already awake, chipping away at the snow that made up one wall of their accommodations. It was easier to see inside the cockpit, since the sun was starting to rise, outlining the horizon with a pinkish glow.

Jack groaned and asked Brian, “What’re ya doin’?”

Brian didn’t answer right away. He just kept chipping at the snow with his thumbnail. When he had scattered enough of the crystals on the floor of the cockpit, he scooped them into his good hand, red from the cold and the exertion. He cupped his hand around the ice chips and slapped it to his mouth, tongue poking out to lick at the frozen water.

“Thirsty?” Jack asked.

Brian only nodded.

“Shit,” Jack said.

Jack tried to move his legs to get the circulation flowing, but it was slow going. His ribs ached. He folded his arms across his midsection to try to keep himself from falling apart because of the pain.

And Jack was no slouch.

His stint in the Army kept him in top-notch physical condition, despite the travails of serving overseas in wartime. He was already in pretty good shape when he came off the mountain after his second year of sheep-herding. He didn’t have the beer belly that some guys his age started to acquire, despite the amount of beer he liked to drink. No, he had a nice set of abs from all the time he spent on horseback, and brawny arms from hauling water to camp, wrangling sheep, and chopping wood all summer. Not to mention the fact that his calves and quads were ripped from riding and being ridden by Ennis Del Mar.

When Jack joined the Army, he knew going in that he wasn’t educated enough to get a position he really wanted. Serving in the infantry not only sucked, but it was the best way to get himself killed. He eventually got a chance at something better, but not until ’65, when Uncle Sam started heavy-duty troop deployment.

Somewhere in the back of his mind, he remembered a dream he had in his childhood. Ever since he’d been a boy in Lightning Flat, staring at the contrails that crisscrossed the sky above his daddy’s spread, he wanted to be a pilot. He’d take a kite out into the fields and let her soar in the prairie wind. He’d imagine that he was on the nose of that kite, riding into the sky. The kite’s flimsy waxed paper would riffle in the breeze, the tail stretched out below it, like a snake waiting to strike. Jack would dream of what it would be like to be in control of a real flying machine, just like his paper kite in the sky, only bigger and better.

Eventually Jack’s daddy would call him to the barn and bitch him out for not feeding the chickens, or not filling the pig’s trough with water, or not putting the pitchfork away where it belonged. Didn’t matter that his daddy snapped the balsa wood of that kite. He left it in splintered pieces, just like he did every last one of Jack’s hopes and dreams. Today, it was his dream of being a pilot. Tomorrow, it would be his dream of being a bull rider. And the next day, it would be something else. No matter what Jack wished for, his daddy tried his best to quash that dream before it got too close to reality. Jack didn’t have to wonder what his daddy was so afraid of—what made him too scared just to let Jack be. Jack always knew the reason. It was that something that made him act differently from the other boys… well most other boys, but not all.

Jack liked being in the Army. It was sort of like the rodeo, where he got to hang out with guys, many of whom were just like him. Of course they didn’t show it out in the open. But when the threat of being sent to the jungle made them quake in their boots, they sought each other out, instead of crying for their Mamas. Their situation got even more intense after Jack had been in a couple years and the troop deployments escalated, the danger thick in the air like the smell of gunpowder on the Fourth of July.

The tormented ones would find each other sobbing in the barracks, the only relief coming from having their pants around their ankles and a hot mouth on their cock. Jack was no exception. He liked to suck cock and he liked the feel of a smooth tongue on his balls, the brush of a whiskered cheek chaffing his thighs.

Serving in the Army was all good for Jack.

Being trained as a helicopter pilot was even better.

But that was an accident.

Jack always knew that he was book-smart, at least that’s what his Mama told him. When the sergeant saw him reading the Engineer Field Data Manual for the fun of it, he knew he had caught his attention.

He took a few tests and passed them with flying colors after all the reading he had done. He worried that he’d flunk out because of the vision tests, but much to his surprise, his eyesight was a hell of a lot better than his old sheepherding buddy, Ennis Del Mar.

Up until then, Jack never realized that he could become a helicopter pilot. He had no fancy college degree like some of the other guys who were in training for it.

He spent six months studying for his Alternate Flight Aptitude Selection Test, poring over the manuals that taught him what kind of shit to do and not to do when flying a chopper over enemy territory.

In the end, his commander gave him the bad news. He had passed the test, but he was out of luck if he wanted to become a pilot. It was weeks before Jack knew what had gone wrong. He wrote back home to his Ma about it.

Turned out, Jack wasn’t qualified to take any of those tests in the first place. The tests were meant for college guys, and the Army didn’t want a pissant ranch kid flying their expensive machinery. He thought his dream of becoming a pilot was over. But his old Uncle Harold apparently had some Army connections and a soft spot for the boy. He made it his business to get involved.

When all was said and done, Jack had logged in more than 1,000 hours of combat flying in Vietnam. Got a shit-ton of fancy medals for it too. Sent them home for his Ma to hang on the wall in a specially-made display case.

Jack hoped that it galled his daddy every time he had to walk by that fancy display, medals gleaming in the afternoon sun. He probably closed his eyes just to avoid seeing what his queer son had accomplished.

In the shattered cockpit, Jack sure wished some of those medals had been for winter survival skills instead. He took Brian’s cue and downed some ice chips that he had melted in his hand. It wasn’t near enough like the coffee and cigarette that he craved.

The sky was fully blue now, and it worried Jack that there was no sign of an aircraft flying overhead to look for them. With no sign of a rescue party trying to reach them on foot in the night, he knew that he and Brian would have to start to make their own plans to get off the mountain.

“I doubt we’re going to find anything more useful in this chopper than our own two feet,” Jack said.

“Do you mean what I think you mean?” Brian grunted, lifting his head from his cupped palm.

“It’s time for us to move out,” Jack said.

~~~

Alma played with Lisa for a while in her basement cocoon. She had managed to save some photo albums from the fire that ravaged her apartment. She showed them to the young girl who still thought of Alma as an aunt. Lisa pointed at the pictures and identified the younger versions of the people she knew. Uncle Ennis, her daddy K.E., Alma’s sister Ava, and friends that the Del Mars shared with Alma, even though she wasn’t truly a Del Mar anymore.

Before long, Laurie was calling from the top of the stairs, “Lisa, it’s time to go to school.”

“Did you know that I’m in kindergarten, Auntie Alma?” Lisa asked.

“Yes, I did know that. You’re such a big girl now,” Alma said, “and smart too.”

Lisa beamed with pride.

“I’ll see you when I get home from school, Auntie,” Lisa said as she hurried up the stairs.

Laurie called down, “Alma, I’m walking Lisa to school, and I have Linda with me. There’s coffee on the stove if you want some.”

“Okay,” Alma called back, straightening her nightgown. “I’ll see you when you get back.”

A minute later, Alma heard the door shut.

She sank down into the springy mattress, pulling the covers up to her chin.

She couldn’t imagine what it would be like to have two girls to care for, or even one girl relying on her as a mother. Alma was certain she would have been a failure at raising children herself. Even if she ever had gotten the opportunity, she knew she wouldn’t want to make the same mistakes Ann had made with her and Ava. But she wasn’t sure whether she could even begin to identify right from wrong for her children. She knew that she wouldn’t want them to date boys. Not until they were at least as old as Alma was now. Maybe never.

Boys.

That was always where the trouble began.

Alma was in seventh grade the first time a boy expressed interest in her.

He whistled at her from across the schoolyard.

She was waiting for the bell to ring that would signal the start of the school day. There was a crowd of students in the courtyard waiting for the big double-wide doors to open. The morning air was filled with noisy chatter as girls talked to each other. She listened to the hoots and hollers of the onlookers as a pair of boys duked it out on the cement walkway. There was no teacher in sight to break up the fight, so the boys were left to settle their squabble on their own. And then it happened—

A wolf whistle pierced the air, and it was directed right at Alma.

Alma turned and caught Jerry Brightman with his fingers still in his mouth and a sly look on his face.

Alma was stunned and humiliated.

Why would this boy, who she didn’t even know, insult her in such a lewd way?

She knew that the sound of a wolf whistle meant something dirty.

Alma was angry.

What gave him the right to fantasize about her in his sick little mind, when she had done nothing to invite his interest?

She hugged her notebook to her chest, not wanting to give the boy, an eight-grader no less, a better look at her burgeoning breasts.

Another boy smacked Jerry on the back, and with a big grin on his face, Jerry turned and followed him into a different part of the schoolyard.

Alma felt like she had been assaulted.

She didn’t dare tell her parents about the incident when she got home from school.

While she hoped her father would get his shotgun out to meet the boy on his front doorstep, she worried that her mother would accuse her of attracting the unwanted attention by behaving in a manner that was unladylike and more like a common tramp. Ann was fond of that expression. Although Alma wasn’t quite sure what a tramp was, unless she thought of the dog from that Disney movie, she knew it couldn’t be a good thing if her mother was accusing her of being one with such venom in her voice.

Since she couldn’t go to her parents, Alma did what she thought was the next best thing. She went to the principal’s office and reported what Jerry Brightman had done to her.

Mr. Hughes just laughed at her a bit and told her not to worry about it.

“It means he likes you,” the principal said, tapping his ruler on the side of his desk.

“But I don’t want him to like me,” Alma said, nervous about being in the principal’s office, although she was the one who initiated the meeting.

“Well, someday, you’ll want boys to like you,” Mr. Hughes assured Alma.

Alma doubted that very much. Only a sinful girl would welcome a boy’s attention like that, especially out in public in front of all the school kids. What would they think of Alma?

Probably the same thing they thought about Alma now. A divorced woman. Incapable of keeping her husband. A sinner who broke her marriage vows was an affront to her community, her family, and most importantly—to God, who she stood in front of and swore that she would stay married until death do her and Ennis Del Mar part. She was no longer married, yet she wasn’t dead. She had a hard time wrapping her head around it.

Alma lamented the loss of the children she never wanted and the children she would never have. But in their absence, she felt more joy than sadness. She felt relieved that she would never have to fear for her daughters and the unwanted attention they might receive from boys. If she had children, she would have had to teach them things that she herself knew so little about. She wasn’t equipped to do it. The only womanly wisdom she had came from her mother’s lectures about sin and from a story about a fumble in Bradley McBurney’s pants. And she had learned a few such lessons from Janet Lynch and Dan Donovan and Ennis Del Mar.

No, she could do without passing those life lessons on to anyone else. No one else should have to suffer so much humiliation for a marriage she wanted so badly.

~~~

Jeff’s Jeep sputtered and coughed as it bounced over the rutted dirt road. The headlights illuminated patches of snow that lingered in the lower elevations, but as FR 125 climbed, the dirt track turned to ice as the temperature dropped with the rise in the topography. The ice gave way to deepening snow. Frozen wheel tracks, dimpled with the studs from snow tires, indicated where the SAR vehicles had performed tight three-point turns to make their way back to the base after yesterday’s mission. He pulled into a parking spot and killed the headlights as the sun crested the horizon. The remaining mile to the trailhead and cabin was marred only by their single track of snowshoes as the rescuers tramped the way from the rescue site back to their vehicles.

Jeff tried the walkie-talkie one more time.

“Ennis? Come in, Ennis,” Jeff said into the handset.

He only got static in return.

“Sonofabitch,” Jeff said.

It wasn’t like Ennis to disobey orders, but he did seem inordinately concerned about Wayne’s new chopper pilot. Ennis had animatedly described how he knew Jack Twist from back when he was a teenager, well before Ennis started working for the Forest Service. Nevertheless, Jeff had a job to do.

Back at Twin Lakes, Wayne was ready to deploy the search party as soon as they had an idea of where the chopper went down. Jim Nueve was set to fly at dawn, along with a spotter who could help scan the terrain between Buena Vista and yesterday’s rescue site. Jeff’s main concern should have been on the accident victim that they intended to rescue the day before, but he’d be lying if he said he wasn’t worried to death about his medic and the pilot that had flown in from Salida for the rescue.

Jeff tested the groove in the snow with a stomp of his foot. It punched through the surface layer of crust and into the soft mush beneath it. The temperature had warmed overnight. That could be a good sign for anyone trying to survive the mountain conditions. Jeff strapped on his snowshoes so he could trek the mile to Ennis’s cabin without postholing through yesterday’s track. He tightened the belt on his backpack and made sure he left the walkie-talkie turned on, so he could be kept up to date on the search operation.

Jim and the spotter should have been in the air by now. If he listened carefully, Jeff thought he could hear the approach of the single engine Cessna as it flew from Twin Lakes into the backcountry.

The sound traveled well in the wintery woods. The trees hadn’t yet sprouted their spring leaves to dampen the sound of an engine, a birdsong, or a voice shouting for rescue in the thin mountain air.

Unfortunately the reception wasn’t always as clear with the walkie-talkies.

“Jeff? Come in, Jeff,” Wayne’s voice cackled through the radio.

Jeff stopped and unclipped the walkie-talkie from its holder and pressed the talk button with mitted fingers.

“Go ahead, this is Jeff,” he said.

“This is Wayne. Just wanted to let you know they flew over the southernmost ridge and didn’t see anything. They’re going to circle back and go in lower to get a better look. Did you get to Ennis yet?” Wayne asked.

“Almost there,” Jeff said. “Keep me posted. Over and out.”

He clipped the walkie-talkie back into its holder and continued his trek. The mile-long trail passed quickly under his snowshoes. He figured it took him only twenty minutes or so to make it to the cabin. He wasn’t surprised by what he found there. Ennis was missing and there were hot coals in the woodstove that suggested he had left it stoked the previous night.

He got back on the radio to Wayne and let him know what he found. He made special mention of the track he found, fresh snowshoe prints leading from Ennis’s cabin toward the southern ridges.

He followed them into the brightening woods.

~~~


	12. Chapter 12

_And submit to the mystic yet relevant call whose lure is to seek and to find_

Ennis paused in his ascent of the second ridge, thinking he heard a plane flying in the distance. It sounded like it was heading south, but he couldn’t make it out against the bright morning sunshine that had flooded the mountain above treeline. He figured Jeff had put his search party in the air before he would let anyone hit the ground, especially after depleting his men’s energy and RMSAR’s resources the day before.

Catching his breath on the uphill climb, Ennis unclipped the radio from his belt and turned it on. He waited while it searched for an active channel that he might use to communicate with the crew at Twin Lakes. The damn thing didn’t have a wide enough range to reach Salida, otherwise he might have known that Jack Twist was the new hotshot chopper pilot that had been hired to work for Wayne.

If he had known... if _only_ he had known that Jack was there, things might have been different. He had spent the past four years believing Jack was dead, never wondering what might have happened had he seen him again. No, John Twist had taken away that opportunity, Ennis’s only chance to dream about a life that _could_ have been if he had been brave enough to reach for it. He hadn’t thought about it since that fateful day when he learned that Jack had been killed. But now the reality of the situation came crashing down upon him.

Why hadn’t Jack looked for him?

There was only one possible answer.

Alma.

Jack wouldn’t have wanted to interfere, knowing Ennis’s plans to marry Alma. Jack had no way of predicting what would come to pass after the ceremony was over, the tremendous fuck-up that messed up everyone’s lives from there on out. Ennis wondered if maybe the same thing had happened to Jack. He supposed he’d get a chance to ask him about it someday, if he could get his sorry ass up this mountain and find the bastard somewhere in the snow.

“Jaaaaaack!” he called into the wind.

Ennis’s voice was growing hoarse, but the break in his stride as he ascended the ridge gave him a second wind so he could call out for Jack, just in case Jack could hear him.

At the time, he thought taking up with Alma was the right thing to do. She was so pretty and soft and kind that Ennis was swept off his feet just as much as she was. He wanted to do the right thing, the honorable thing. His own folks never talked much about how they met or got married. They never did much of anything, except work on the ranch all day and half the night. They were dead and gone before Ennis could have thought to ask them what it was like, to fall in love, to want to spend the rest of your life with someone.

He figured it was more like a rite of passage, like learning how to jerk off, how to shave, or how to drive a truck. Getting married? That was the sissy stuff that girls all wanted to do, so when he found the first girl who wanted to marry him, he took his chances and popped the question.

He never gave it much thought, beyond that.

How could he have known that it would have gotten so fucked up from there?

How could he have known when he took a job with Farm and Ranch Employment, that all his feelings about life and love and sex would have gotten so mixed up?

He blamed it on the blue-eyed rodeo fool who took every chance he got to peel away Ennis’s tough exterior. Things were good for them on the mountain. Too good.

Ennis never understood how his transformation began, how a quick drunken fuck in a cold tent turned into something that changed his life. When he thought back to their time on the mountain, he figured it all started the night he sat all alone by the fire. The knotted wood of the gnarled log pressed uncomfortably into the back of his thighs. No matter how he shifted in his seat, the dull ache of loneliness seeped up his body and into his heart. It was what he was used to every day of his life. This was no different than any day on a ranch, trying to make ends meet, worried about having spending money for beer or a second-hand shotgun. Only, it was different this time... Jack made it different.

With his hat pulled down tight, he clenched his jaw like he had done the whole time he had been on the mountain. He clamped down on his words to keep them from escaping into the night air. The fire crackled, the last of the dampness hissing out of the green wood Jack had chopped early in the morning.

Jack.

Ennis’s head stayed low, amber eyes watching the glow of the diminishing flames. He wished Jack could forget about what happened the night before.

At only nineteen years of age, Ennis had been worn down by life, but the loneliness was something that he had accepted for so long that it required none of his attention. He couldn’t wait until he got off this mountain and back to Alma. He hadn’t realized how lonely his life was until Jack came into the picture. It was as if the promise of something he couldn’t have made him crave it all the more.

Ennis watched Jack take the pot of boiling water from the fire. It was his turn to clean their mess after a silent dinner. He scraped the pots with the rusty spatula that they’d used to flip their eggs in the morning. Ennis remembered his Mama doing the same thing when they’d lived in a two-bedroom cabin in Sage with no indoor plumbing. She’d rinse the dishes and dry them with a ratty green dishtowel or she’d set them on the wooden rack for the water to drip from their chipped edges. He wondered how she’d decided the proper technique for drying each object or dish. He would have asked her how, if he could. But since his Pa missed the only curve in the road, orphaning him and his older brother and sister on a rainy night, he never got the chance. So many things he would have asked them both now, had they been here to listen.

Ennis’s callused hands encircled the dented tin coffee cup. His nicked fingers hung on for dear life as a shot of whiskey loosened his tongue. His brother and sister did right by him, he was able to say with the liquor unfurling in his belly. The smoothness crept up his throat to set his words free. Both siblings had gone off and gotten married, started families of their own, abandoning Ennis. K.E with his wife Laurie, and Ellen with Chet—there was no room in their lives for a third-wheel younger brother. It was time for him to support himself, to stand on his own two feet. Besides, Ennis didn’t want to be a bother to either of them.

On the mountain, he had no cares or worries. As he and Jack sat by the fire at the campsite on Brokeback, Ennis had no responsibilities except to ride up to the pasture to bed down the sheep. Once their nightly camp tasks were completed, he could stretch out on the bedroll next to Jack for forty winks, dozing under the waning moon.

He’d watched Jack move, gracefully pulling the rope hand over hand, raising their food bag to keep the vermin out of their stores. Jack had tied the knot and caught Ennis’s eyes from across the firelight. Ennis had hidden his smile behind thin lips pressed tight for so long that he almost forgot how to curl them into a grin.

Ennis always wondered if other young men felt the same way he did, like running away and hiding when they discovered what they really desired.

Jack had shoved his leather work gloves into his back pocket, and stepped across the campsite toward him.

Ennis reminded himself that Jack was spared the lesson taught in blood and violence by Ennis’s father. No, Jack’s easy ways made Ennis decide that not all other boys shared Ennis’s fears. Other boys weren’t forced to condemn themselves because of a parent who brought them to see the effects of their immoral thoughts on what was once living flesh. Other parents might have done worse.

Jack slumped down onto the log, squeezing between Ennis and a rough spot. Ennis wondered if Jack had his share of trouble back home or in school. He thought maybe he did, even if his father hadn’t instilled in him the fear of the tire iron and the threat of a redneck lynching. Jack must have known the same misery of being different, knowing he wasn’t like the other boys. He must have known the same daily struggles that Ennis faced. Keep your head down. Become a sophomore. Stay out of trouble. Get through this year and the next and the next. Get married, raise some kids. Don’t let no one find out about you.

At the edge of the clearing, their tent was pitched for the night. The warmth rose off Jack’s skin. He’d drop his head to Ennis’s shoulder, telling him wordlessly that things didn’t have to be the way Ennis’s Pa taught him. No matter that Ennis had known no other way, with no place for him except the darkness of being alone, one eye open watching to see from which direction the next blow would come.

With Jack there, Ennis dared to wade through the brambles of longing, pushing aside their prickly barbs to stand free of their stabs at his skin and their tugs at his clothing. With Jack, there was someone to understand Ennis, someone to tell him it was all right to stop pretending he was something he wasn’t. It was okay to stop the fear. It was okay to have the need, and the hope.

Jack had let out a long breath. With his hands on his knees he pushed himself off the log and stood by the fire.

“Ennis?” Jack asked, taking one of Ennis’s work-rough hands in his own.

Ennis let Jack pull him into the canvas tent. He let him flick open the buttons of his shirt one by one before he collapsed to the dirt floor, his head cradled in Jack’s arms.

Ennis sighed, belonging for a moment in the place where he could finally breathe for the first time in ten years, where he could exhale slack-jawed and relaxed in the middle of nowhere, where no one could judge him. He could finally be as his maker made him.

The relief felt undeserved, but it overwhelmed him anyway. Ennis knew it could be stripped away by the sound of a stranger’s voice, by a plane overhead, or the barking of a tame ranch dog, but he thrived on it, wallowed in it, lived it for the first time, unencumbered by the weight of what society would think… until the day the snows came. Snow like the interminable snow beneath Ennis’s feet right now. It ruined his plans back in ’63, and it ruined his plans today when he wanted nothing more than to catch that man again and ask him why it had to be this way? Why had it turned out the way it did with Alma? Why couldn’t it be different for them? Could it be different for them now? He needed answers, and the only man who could give them to him was somewhere in the wilderness.

“Jaaaack!”

Ennis’s footsteps were slow now. He could barely catch his breath if he stopped to rest between every few steps. The thin air and the exertion, fueled only by a half Thermos of coffee wasn’t enough to push him through. Just a few more steps and he’d be to the top of the ridge with the world laid out below him, an eagle’s view of the land where Jack was somehow found and then lost again.

Ennis topped out on the ridge and fell onto his ass, his chest heaving for an unhindered breath. He didn’t know how long he would sit in the snow, waiting for his heartbeat to return to normal.

~~~

“Are we ready to do this?” Jack asked as Brian stood in the opening they had made to the outside of the ruined chopper. It hurt to breathe, but sitting in the stagnant air of the cockpit was maddening. He felt like he had eaten enough ice chips that he shouldn’t be dehydrated, even though his piss was the color of a ripe lemon when he took a leak in the snow.

“Maybe we should piss an S.O.S. out on the slope,” Brian said with a chuckle.

“Maybe I ought to check your head again, make sure you’re not concussed,” Jack said.

It was hard to try to crack a joke when his chest was on fire, but Jack made the best of it.

“That’s not a bad idea,” Brian said, running his hands through his curly hair.

“Checking your head?” Jack asked.

“No,” Brian said, agitated. “Writing a message in the snow. A big S.O.S. for when the rescuers come. We can make an arrow pointing downhill, so they’ll know which way we went.”

Jack would have laughed, if he could. Brian’s idea was a good one, but they had nothing to mark out the slope with. It would have been different if they had some spray paint or charcoal with them to use as a marker, but no, they couldn’t find a damn thing in the cockpit that they could use to help get themselves off the mountain. They’d have to head downhill and hope for the best.

Outside the cockpit, Jack gazed at the bottom of the avalanche runout where the chopper lay in a heap of wreckage. He looked through the pine trees that surrounded them. There was a chance that a plane or another chopper wouldn’t even be able to see the debris from the sky, let alone follow his and Brian’s footprints as they descended the mountain.

The avalanche had carried them to the floor of a ravine. It was doubtful that a spotter in an aircraft would be able to tell that they slid down into the ravine with an avalanche on their heels after they had crashed. There would be such little hope that there would be survivors, he doubted they’d deploy a ground crew until all the snow melted. They’d be lucky to be found by the end of August.

“Okay, we can make an arrow,” Jack said, catching his breath.

They had already cannibalized all they could from the hypothermia-wrap that had protected Davis’s body. They donned the clothing, without paying any attention to which layer belonged next to their skin and which should be worn as a protection over their dry clothes in case rain should fall during their hike out.

Jack leaned against the chopper’s remains while Brian stamped out an arrow pointing downhill.

He watched Brian stand back to admire his work, his useless arm in a make-shift sling, his head still leaking an occasional trickle of blood that stained the snow crimson.

“Ready?” Jack asked.

“Ready,” Brian said.

They left the chopper behind, and began to trudge down the snowy slope. In five miles or more, they might reach the highway. If they were lucky, they’d be intercepted by a search and rescue team first.

“Stay with me,” Jack said. “We can take turns breaking trail.”

Jack picked his way through the frozen mess that littered the area downhill from the wreckage. Boulder-sized chunks of snow had firmed up in the night and made a formidable obstacle course. They soon reached the end of the runout, where the snowy surface turned smooth again, unaffected by the avalanche’s path.

Although his ribs ached, Jack plunged through the thigh-deep snow heading south, downhill. Each step he took had him wishing that he had snowshoes to ease his way across the drifted snow that had gathered in the ravine. His lungs ached for lack of oxygen. He had only been in Colorado for a couple weeks and hadn’t fully acclimatized to the change in elevation or the terrain. The snow-covered slopes were about as far as you could get from the jungles of Vietnam.

He doubted they’d make enough progress to reach the road, even if they traveled downhill all day. The snow was so deep in the sheltered ravine that not much of it had yet begun to melt in the spring weather. Winter clung to the Rocky peaks and valleys for much longer than it did the prairie and plains below.

With every fourth step, Jack paused to catch his breath and make sure that Brian was right behind him. He knew he could only keep up this trailbreaking for fifteen minutes or so, at most, before he’d need to let Brian take a turn at breaking through the snowy barrier. At least they were heading downhill.

“Jack,” Brian shouted, “do you hear that?”

“What?” Jack asked, turning to check on Brian’s progress.

Both men remained silent for ten seconds or more. Jack heard nothing.

“I could have sworn I heard a plane,” Brian said.

Jack shook his head as he watched Brian hugging his broken arm to his chest. He supposed that it wasn’t uncommon for Brian to have imagined that he heard the sound of a plane’s engine. When a soldier was as lost and as desperate as Brian and Jack were now, his mind could play tricks on him, presenting an image of what he wanted most, right in front of him.

Jack was wary about believing his own ears, distrusting them when he thought he heard a recon plane flying overhead. It seemed just as ludicrous as thinking he saw a search party trudging up the ravine to meet them, or Ennis Del Mar riding down the hill on Cigar Butt with saddlebags bursting with food.

Some things were too good to be true.

~~~

While Alma waited for Laurie to return from dropping Lisa off at school, she climbed the stairs and helped herself to a cup of coffee in the kitchen. Laurie had made the coffee in a real percolating coffee pot—there was none of that instant coffee shit like her parents used at their house. In fact, K.E. and Laurie’s house had some appliances and gadgets that made it surge miles ahead of the Beers’ household when it came to luxury.

K.E. must have taken after some distant Del Mar relative who was both ambitious and hardworking. Ennis was more hardworking than ambitious. He seemed to truly care about the responsibilities of his role as a new husband, but when it came to fulfilling those responsibilities, he fell short.

He seemed to have had so much promise when they first met.

Alma couldn’t believe it when Ennis asked her to go to the movies.

She hadn’t been on a date since the time Colin Woods nearly raped her in the front seat of his Cadillac.

She wished she could forget about Colin. Standing at Laurie’s kitchen counter, she said a Hail Mary to remind herself that she had the Holy Mother to protect her. It was hard for Alma to remember that night. She crossed herself and went to the living room to look out the window to see if Laurie was walking up the street with Linda, hoping their return would interrupt her bad memories. Unfortunately, the street was empty.

Alma had just finished her junior year of high school, the same school year that had begun with Dan Donovan’s attempt to kiss her. She was excited about her senior year. It had seemed like such a long wait until she got to be a senior, but those days were finally here, and with them came many privileges. There was a dance scheduled in June to coincide with graduation and to celebrate the juniors moving up. Alma didn’t think she stood a chance for a boy from her class to ask her to the dance. She sullenly resigned herself to spending the night alone.

Her mother had been right, after all. Margaret Quinn had found a new boy to date, confirming Alma’s suspicion that she would never be as popular or as desired as the girl who could sing like an angel and get all the boys to knock on her door, while none knocked on Alma’s. So imagine Alma’s surprise when Janet offered to set her up with a boy she knew from Hiland—Colin Woods.

Alma was hesitant to go to the dance with a boy who she had never met. And to be honest, she was more than a little wary about Janet as a matchmaker. Janet seemed to know so much more about the workings of the world than Alma did. It was daunting for Alma to try to keep up.

In the end, she gave Janet’s _friend_ a chance.

Alma saw Colin for the first time when he came to pick her up for the dance. He was tall and lanky with a head of black hair that had been slicked back with Brylcreem. He looked much older than any high school boy she had ever seen, with fine crinkles framing his eyes and a trace of stubble on his chin.

Alma’s parents, especially her mother, were thrilled at the prospect of a date for their daughter. Alma could tell by the way Ann admired Colin’s Cadillac in the driveway of their Riverton home that her reaction was more about the car than the boy himself. The late model Cadillac was a sign of prestige that the Beers family didn’t often encounter. Alma was certain that her father asked Colin how he had acquired the vehicle, something Alma didn’t dare to ask about, although she had secretly wondered.

After a time, Colin must have satisfactorily answered all of George’s questions about his intentions, because the next thing Alma knew, she was being whisked off to the Riverton Country Club for the Junior Frolic. She had been assured that they were going to pick up Janet and her date along the way.

But Alma never made it to the dance.

Colin took her to the parking lot of the Wind River Mercantile, where they met up with Janet and her date, Robert Tinkham. Robert had driven his own car and had picked Janet up. She had undoubtedly arranged the meeting ahead of time with Colin. Alma should have known better. Janet didn’t want to go to a silly old dance. She had probably never planned to go to it in the first place.

Colin leaned out the car window and spoke to Robert, trying to figure out where to get some food and find a place to go afterwards, but Alma couldn’t hear many of the details. She simply sat in the passenger’s seat and fidgeted with the strap on her purse while the boys discussed where they were going to go.

Alma was fuming mad at Janet for arranging such a thing. Before she had a chance to voice her displeasure, Colin peeled out of the parking lot, following Robert’s car down Main Street.

Alma was too scared to ask Colin where they were going. Besides, a boy was supposed to be in charge of their activities when he asked a girl on a date. It would be impolite of Alma to think poorly of Colin just because he had a change of heart about going to the dance. Alma had been taught to be demure and poised if she wanted to have any chance of getting a boy to knock on her door. So far, it had worked. She was a perfect lady in every way, and Colin came along. She should have known it was too good to be true, but the fear of disappointing her mother was too great for her to think clearly.

If Colin wanted to take her somewhere, she would go along with it. She took a deep breath and watched the farmers’ fields go by as they sped down the highway. Her mother would have been proud of how ladylike she was behaving, even though she was a little afraid of where Colin was taking her. She tried to breathe slower, remembering that Janet and Robert were part of this plan too. Janet wouldn’t let anything dangerous happen to Alma.

It didn’t cross Alma’s mind that her definition and Janet’s definition of _dangerous_ might be two entirely different things.

They pulled into the parking lot of a McDonald’s. Alma wasn’t sure exactly where they were, but it was somewhere outside of Riverton. Thermopolis, maybe. They had driven for nearly an hour.

Colin got out of the car, and without bothering to go to Alma’s door to open it for her, he asked, “Are you coming in?”

Alma was shocked by his ungentlemanly behavior, but since he was her date, she had no choice but to tolerate it. She tugged at the handle of the car door and accompanied him inside the restaurant, with Janet and Robert following close behind.

While the boys waited in line to order food, Alma got Janet’s attention and all but dragged her into the ladies’ room. Janet laughed the whole way there, her high-heels skittering across the ceramic tile floor.

“Janet!” Alma gritted out through clenched teeth. “What are we doing here?”

Janet’s eyes looked glassy bright. She twirled Alma around, stumbling over her own feet.

“Colin is so adorable,” Janet said. “You two make such a cute couple.”

Alma cringed.

“What’s wrong with you? I thought we were going to the dance?” Alma asked. She checked her pale lipstick in the mirror above the sink while Janet peed.

Colin was cute, but whether she was willing to be coupled up with him was an entirely different matter.

“Oh, come on, Alma,” Janet said. “We’re just having a little fun before the dance. The guys are still going with us.”

“I’m not so sure,” Alma said. She watched Janet warily for a moment before she ducked into a stall to pee.

She heard the door slam and when she came out to wash her hands, Janet was gone. Alma hurried out of the restaurant to see Robert and Colin sitting on the bumper of Colin’s car while they each ate a Big Mac.

“Here, I got you some fries,” Colin said, handing the greasy little bag of French fries to Alma.

“Thanks,” Alma said, unsure of whether she really should be thanking Colin for taking her so far from home without her parents’ knowledge.

She supposed it was okay. Her parents seemed awfully fond of Colin, although they had only spent about fifteen minutes with him.

“Can we go to the dance now?” Alma asked sheepishly, as she popped a French fry into her mouth.

“Sure,” Colin said, crumpling the Styrofoam package from his sandwich. As he walked to the front of his car to toss it into the trash bin, he nudged Robert on the arm.

At least he had the decency to open the car door for Alma this time. She slid onto the passenger’s side seat and waited for Colin to start the car. It must have been nearly eight o’clock. If she were lucky, she’d get to spend an hour at the dance before having to return home for her ten o’clock curfew.

She watched as Robert and Janet pulled out of their parking space and drove away.

Colin fidgeted with the cover to the steering wheel.

“So, Alma,” he said. “What do you want to do now?”

Alma snorted a stream of breath out through her nose. It was the most ridiculous question ever.

“Well, go to the dance, of course,” she said, glancing at him sideways.

“What if I can think of something better to do?” Colin asked, his voice deep and sultry.

As soon as the words left his lips, he reached across the seat and squeezed Alma’s thigh.

Alma tried to get away. She pressed her back against the vinyl of the car seat and kicked with her legs against the floorboards until she was wedged into the corner between the seat and the car door, the metal handle digging into her arm.

“What’s the matter, Alma?” Colin asked, pulling away. “I thought you liked me.”

Alma could scarcely breathe. She panted heavily, her nostrils flaring.

Colin leaned forward and cupped his palm to Alma’s breast.

Alma’s body went completely stiff and she couldn’t take another breath.

“Jeez, Alma, you act like no one has ever touched you before,” Colin whispered.

She didn’t know what to do next. Colin had passed all the tests that Alma’s father had for him, and her mother had become so fond of him in the short time that she had known him. She had to question why this was happening. Maybe Colin was the one? Maybe it was her destiny to marry Colin Woods?

He groped her breast even more forcefully. She wanted to slap his hand away, to run screaming from his fancy car. But she was conflicted. Touching her breast was something that only a married person would be permitted. If Colin wanted to touch her breast, did it not mean that he wanted to commit to a lifelong relationship with Alma? Wasn’t touching her breast as good a sign as any for expressing his desire to marry her?

What else could she possibly think?

Alma screamed when the policeman rapped on the window with his nightstick, the bright beam of his flashlight illuminating the interior of the front seat.

“Roll down the window,” the policeman barked out.

Alma nervously complied, her hand shaking as she fought to turn the crank.

“Is everything all right in here?” the policeman asked as he shined his flashlight in Colin’s face.

Alma was horrified to see the hazy look of lust on his face, the instant before his pupils dilated in the flashlight’s beam.

“Sure, officer,” Colin said. “Everything is fine. I was just looking for something in the glove box.”

Alma nodded to the policeman, noticing the layer of condensation that had steamed the interior of the windows.

“You’d best be on your way,” the policeman said.

Colin never said another word. He drove back to Riverton like the devil was on his tail, dropped Alma off at her house, and took off into the night.

Alma later learned that Colin was twenty-one years old. She never forgave Janet for fixing her up with a boy that was so much older than the boys from her high school. More than a year would pass before she met Ennis Del Mar.

Just then, in the K.E. Del Mar’s kitchen, Alma caught a glimpse of Laurie pushing Linda in her stroller as they turned the corner onto their street. She finished the last of her coffee and put the cup into the dishwasher.

Near the end of her senior year in high school, Alma had gotten a part-time job at the Riverton Drug Store, working the soda fountain and making root beer floats two days each week after school. That was where she met Laurie Hobbs, her co-worker who was soon to be married to K.E. Del Mar.

Laurie was friendly to Alma in the way that suggested they had been the best of friends for much longer than the short months that they had known each other. At the soda fountain, Laurie often talked about setting Alma up with her boyfriend’s brother, Ennis. The boys, along with their older sister, Ellen, had been orphaned a few years earlier when their parents died in a car accident. Fortunately, the Del Mar children were in their teens and able to care for themselves.

Eventually, Ennis began to make deliveries to the Riverton Drug Store from Richardson’s Dairy Farm where he worked as a hand. He ran errands and delivered milk and cream in the old box truck that old man Richardson kept around just for that purpose. Alma always suspected that Laurie had pulled some strings to arrange a meeting between Alma and Ennis.

While Alma supposed that Ennis lived in a bunkhouse with the other roughneck hands who worked on the dairy farm, he was much quieter than the other boys she knew.

Alma was older now and she knew the difference between a respectable boy and a boy who only had one thing on his mind. With his tattered jeans and his quiet manner, Ennis was different. Alma took a shine to him right away.

Ennis Del Mar was nothing at all like Colin Woods.

That’s why when he asked Alma to go to the movies with him right before her graduation, Alma jumped at the chance.

~~~


	13. Chapter 13

_I never shall mind if the terrain be strange my compass is trusty and true_

Nature plays a terrible game on a body that spends time outdoors in the cruelest season. Two hazards work together to wreak havoc on an unsuspecting human. Unlike the would-be lovers who can’t establish their connection, the two dangers go hand-in-hand to do damage wherever they may. Seldom can one be present without the other. The wintry air in which the voices of children ring and a snowball fort is built by gleeful hands, also brings with it the threat of lowering a body’s temperature to the point where its brain and muscle function are impaired. While hypothermia makes itself known from the very first moment it begins to sweep its victim into a downward spiral, its accompanying dehydration works to steal away a body’s warmth, leaving its victim for dead without a warning of impending doom.

Dehydration doesn’t necessarily mean a person is thirsty.

One hundred percent of hypothermia’s victims suffer from dehydration.

Ninety percent of all mountain rescue victims are dehydrated when they are found.

The dehydration factor contributes to more mountaineering deaths than any other condition.

It’s too easy to lose fluid in the wilderness. The body sweats as it travels the trails. The fluid that keeps a body functioning becomes diminished at the first exertion from activity. The efficient combination of a body sweating and the dry air removing vital fluid with every step make it nearly impossible for a person to keep up with the fluid loss by drinking water alone. Insufficient fluid prevents the body from functioning adequately. It shuts down the muscles, the tissues, the organs.

No organ is more important than the brain. When the brain has inadequate fluids, it robs what it needs from other organs and bodily systems.

At first, the differences in bodily function are subtle.

The dehydrated mountain wanderer has no need to relieve himself. The kidneys lack the necessary fluid to operate. The urine becomes more concentrated. At this point, the victim can see the difference in the color of the urine he produces. He can take steps to correct the low volume of bodily fluid by replenishing what he has lost.

As dehydration progresses, the traveler becomes tired, his muscles fatigued as the brain diverts fluid from them in order to satisfy its own operational needs. The muscles begin to cramp from the lack of sufficient fluid.

Lips and skin taste of salt as the sweat evaporates, leaving behind a white crust of minerals. Nausea ensues as the stomach lacks the fluids it needs. The brain drains the body’s resources further, until it too suffers the effects of dehydration.

The victim becomes lightheaded, and soon a headache begins. The changes in thinking mean something is happening to the brain. At this point, it’s nearly too late to reverse the effects of dehydration without medical intervention. Confusion follows and the victim becomes unable to make logical decisions, which are crucial for survival in the field.

All this can happen without the victim ever feeling thirsty.

~~~

Ennis wasn’t sure how long he sat at the top of the ridge. He downed the last of his coffee, thankful that the Thermos of liquid had stayed hot, despite the wintry conditions. The caffeine would give him the added push he needed to get down into the next valley. He had abandoned all thoughts of returning to his cozy cabin. He wondered what the summer intern did when she showed up that morning and found him gone. It would be a real eye-opener to her when she learned of the missing rescue chopper, along with an accident victim, the pilot, and the paramedic. She’d probably turn tail and hurry back to the parking lot on her Ski-doo.

When Ennis’s breathing had become regular and his heartbeat was once again a steady thump, he decided to give the walkie-talkie a try, although he didn’t relish the thought of getting chewed out by Jeff for disobeying his orders.

“Here goes nothin,” Ennis said as he pressed the button to communicate with the team at Twin Lakes. “Hello Jeff? This is Ennis. Jeff, come in.”

Ennis was relieved to hear the crackle of the static on the line. Maybe he was out of range. What Jeff didn’t know about Ennis’s location wouldn’t hurt him.

As if the damn device could read Ennis’s thoughts and laugh in his face, the walkie-talkie whined a high-pitched squeal before Ennis recognized Jeff’s voice, “Ennis? Is that you? Ennis, this is Jeff. Come in, Ennis.”

“Sonofabitch,” Ennis said before he punched the button to speak. “Jeff, come in. This is Ennis.”

“Ennis, fancy meeting you here,” Jeff said. “I was at your cabin an hour ago. I think I’m following your tracks. What’s your location?”

Ennis was relieved that Jeff didn’t sound too upset.

“I’m heading south toward the highway,” Ennis said. “I’m up on the long ridge off of Elbert right now—the middle one of the three that fan off to the south. Any sign of the chopper?”

“We’ve got Jim flying over in the Cessna, you might have heard him if you’re out that far,” Jeff said. “He hasn’t seen anything out of the ordinary, though.”

“I thought I heard a plane,” Ennis said. “I still haven’t seen anything either. At least the weather is holdin’ huh?”

Ennis scanned the valley in front of him for any signs of wreckage. The ridge dipped into one of the many valleys that extended from the summit of Mt. Elbert to the prairie below. Like corduroy, the landscape was a series of valleys and ridges that ran parallel to each other. When Ennis descended into the valley from the ridge, there was yet another ridge to climb. The sequential terrain would repeat itself until finally Ennis reached Route 82 as it stretched from Aspen to Twin Lakes.

“I’m going to keep going,” Ennis said.

“I figured as much,” Jeff said. “You’re doing a good job of breaking trail. Keep it up, but don’t end up needing to be rescued yourself.”

Ennis didn’t know what to say, so he proceeded with the obvious, “Okay, thanks Jeff. Uh… I’ll see you soon. Over and out.”

Ennis hoped that Jeff had some food with him. He had been breaking trail on snowshoes all night and he had worked up a hunger. He could have kicked himself for not bringing more food with him when he left his cabin. He had underestimated the pull that Jack Twist would have on him. The drive to find him in these acres of wilderness was stronger than anything he could have ever imagined. There was no turning back to the cabin to get more food now.

By this time Ennis’s ass had gone numb, so he figured he had rested long enough. He stood up, shook himself off and began his descent into the next valley, a ravine really, still untouched by the morning sun.

As he plunged through the deepening snow, his breathing became more labored. He could hear himself gasping for breath, and saw short puffs coming from his mouth, then disappearing in an instant.

But he was unaware of the pain in his legs, his mind consumed by a rush of memories. He remembered when his breath had come just as fast, the gasps for air combined with moans of pleasure as he hauled Jack up on all fours, shoved his pants down and felt his cock rub against the smooth skin of Jack’s ass. 

Then he remembered stars exploding behind his closed eyes as he pushed in, felt the white heat, that push and pull against his foreskin, and the world narrowed to his cock inside Jack, tight and unyielding as he shoved harder, a clumsy rhythm between them as Jack strained back, rubbing his ass up against Ennis, groaning, hitting the ground, still pushing, silently begging for more.

Ennis’s cock slammed in as he held Jack still, hands hard on his hips, foreskin sliding back and forth like when he jerked off, but _nothing_ like it at all, nothing like he’d ever….dreamed.

He didn’t want to like it, didn’t want to love the feel of Jack’s weight on him, of his stubble scraping his face, his rough hands on his dick, his fingers in his ass, his mouth working his cock until he thought he would pass out from the pleasure.

He didn’t want to like it. He had a life planned out, a life to build with Alma, a life he wanted with a wife and kids, a family.

Now anger was blotting out those erotic thoughts and all the pain in his legs suddenly assaulted him as he stopped to rest and get his breathing back to normal. But the pain didn’t let up and he had to keep going; a couple steps and stop, a couple steps and stop.

Why had he left the comfort of his cabin? For Jack? Jack, who had made him have those feelings. He never would have done those things if it hadn’t been for Jack. He wanted a wife and kids, a normal life like everybody else.

A couple steps, then stop. And suddenly, in the breaking dawn within the deep ravine he thought he saw a big, hulking shadow – no, not a shadow. It was the wreckage of the chopper, and he started to pray.

He got closer and the light allowed him to pick up more detail of the twisted metal, barely recognizable pieces of the cockpit, parts of the interior scattered on the ground, a tarp.

Jesus, were Jack and Brian dead inside? Or had they been thrown out as the machine tumbled down the mountainside like a child’s discarded toy?

Excruciatingly slowly, whether because of the pain in his legs and lungs, or because he had no desire to see more, he made his way to the crumpled chopper and, bracing himself, looked inside what had been the cockpit – empty.

~~~

“Come on, Brian,” Jack said. He was getting frustrated.

Brian had to be able to keep up with him. He just _had_ to if they were going to have any hope of making it to the road before sunset. Night would come early in this valley and Jack couldn’t see beyond the next set of pines, some hundred feet away. They soared into the sky on either side of the ravine, guarding the depression on the earth’s surface. They would prevent searchers in the air from peering into the cleft and seeing Jack and Brian.

“That’s it, Brian,” Jack said, turning to check on the paramedic’s progress. “It won’t be much longer now.”

Jack lied.

At this rate, they’d never make it out of the ravine before dark.

In the quiet, Jack heard the buzz of a Cessna overhead. He hoped they were looking for signs of the chopper. The pilot seemed to be checking out the ridges and valleys to the south of where Jack followed Brian downhill. If he had enough strength to climb up a steep wall to the top of the ridge, he would have done so to try to signal the plane about their location. But the walls were so steep and the likelihood of him finding an open area where he could make himself visible to the plane was so slim, he pushed the idea aside.

Something else was wrong with Brian, but Jack couldn’t put his finger on it. He was far too preoccupied with the shooting pain in his ribs that lit a fire behind his eyes with every step. He stopped to rest for a minute and watched Brian wander off to the side of the fall line they had been following downhill. It didn’t seem to matter that Jack had expended quite a bit of energy to forge a logical path down the mountain for Brian to follow. Brian just wandered around at will.

“What the hell are you doing?” Jack muttered under his breath.

As much as he hated to do it, Jack started to trudge back uphill to see if he could discourage Brian from wandering off their route unnecessarily. After all, it had to be easier for Brian to follow in Jack’s footsteps, than for him to break in a path of his own through the snow.

When Jack had nearly reached Brian, he came to a downed aspen at the side of the ravine. It had been there for a while, half-rotted where it lay, its branches reaching for the ravine wall. Jack grasped one thin branch. He struggled to raise his boot off the snow so he could stand on the limb while he tugged the other end. A satisfying crack shattered the silence of the ravine. With one branch in his hand for Brian, he broke another branch off for himself. When Brian caught up to him, he handed off a six foot length of sturdy wood.

“Here, you go,” Jack said. “We can use these to steady ourselves on the descent.”

With tired eyes, Brian tossed his aside, not wanting it.

Jack shrugged in exasperation. He thought it was ridiculous that Brian had tossed the branch away, but he couldn’t win an argument with him at the moment. He could barely think coherently, himself. Still, he had an idea that might keep them on track.

“Hey, Brian, I’m beat,” Jack said. “Why don’t you take the lead for a while?”

To Jack’s relief, Brian nodded and pushed past Jack, descending into the trail that Jack had broken when he had to climb up to redirect Brian. At least from his position behind Brian, Jack could watch his progress. Brian stumbled along, using his good arm for balance while his broken arm remained tucked to his chest, supported by layers of Davis Wentworth’s discarded clothing.

Jack felt sick to his stomach. He hadn’t eaten in more than a day, not since he scarfed down a pizza by himself back in Salida on Saturday night. He had drunk some coffee after he landed the chopper at Twin Lakes, he recalled, licking his moistureless lips. A few mouthfuls of melted snow wasn’t helping to diminish his hunger.

Up ahead, Brian couldn’t maintain a straight path. He kept wandering to the side of the trail. When he’d realize his error, he’d work his way back to the center of the ravine and sit down in the middle of the slope, trying to drink the liquid from what ice he could melt in his palm. Jack doubted that Brian could work up enough body heat to melt ice. His own toes were freezing, even though he wore his heavy winter boots. No amount of good warm clothing could make up for his body’s inability to warm itself because it didn’t have any fuel in it. What Jack wouldn’t give for a hot juicy steak or maybe even a Big Mac from McDonald’s. He wished for some of his Mama’s home cooking, although it had been years since he had tasted her meatloaf.

He remembered how she’d make it every Sunday after church. If they were being fancy, she’s serve it with a baked potato topped with sour cream, just like the restaurants did. She’d peel some apples that Jack had picked from the orchard by the river and cook them down to a sauce.

His daddy would sit on the front porch chewing his tobacco while his ma worked over the hot stove. His daddy never did care anything about giving a hand to someone when they were in need. Not his ma, and certainly not his only whelp.

Jack never was able to shake the image he had of his old man chasing him down with a shotgun cocked and ready to fire at him.

He’d do it too, mean bastard. He probably would have ended up in jail, if Jack hadn’t put the pedal to the floor of his old GMC fast enough.

Jack had made the mistake of mentioning Ennis Del Mar one too many times in his daddy’s house. The old man put two-and-two together. He had remembered Jack’s frustration when he came back from his second summer on Brokeback. Jack had done his best to hide the bruise on his cheek, the result of some kind of Neanderthal lover’s quarrel. It was harder to hide the bruises on his heart.

Jack’s Mama understood though. Mamas always seemed to know what was going on, even before their kids did.

But his daddy? No siree.

His daddy accused him of what he had long suspected. The funny thing was, his daddy didn’t even try to convince Jack that he was otherwise. He never suggested that Jack try to find a girlfriend, never asked if he had the hots for that Kimberley Zelinski, the girl with the biggest tits in Lightning Flat, who had every stud within a hundred miles sniffing her out like she was a cat in heat. No, he could probably care less that Jack was a faggot, so long as it gave him an excuse to hate him just like he always had done anyway.

Jack being queer provided John Twist with a reason that would hold up in the Grange Hall when he explained why his son hadn’t been seen around Lightning Flat for years. He did his civic duty in running him off. Never wanted to see him again, and being a faggot was as good a reason as any for following through with it.

Jack could never erase the memory of those cold steel blue eyes as they stared him down outside the house where was born and raised. He didn’t for a minute doubt that the man would pull the trigger.

His Mama pleaded with his daddy not to shoot, but he had never listened to her before and he wasn’t about to start now. He remembered the look on his Mama’s face when his daddy started firing off shots. The whizzing bullets striking the dirt driveway, just missing the worn out tires on Jack’s truck.

“Jack,” his Mama pleaded, terror in her eyes.

But Jack could never figure out why she was pleading to him and not for his daddy to stop shooting.

He turned tail and got into the truck with only the clothes on his back. He floored it, leaving behind a cloud of prairie dust that seemed bigger and more bellicose than the one the bomb left over Hiroshima.

He never did look back.

He hightailed it down Highway 59 to Gillette and enlisted in the Army that same day, Ennis Del Mar and Jack’s daddy be damned. He made one stop at Joe Aguirre’s to see if Ennis had come by, but Aguirre’s answer only added to Jack’s sorrow. He called his Mama a few weeks later when he learned he was on his way across the Pacific. She made it clear that his daddy hadn’t settled down any, and he’d best stay away for his own sake.

Over the years, Jack kept in touch as best he could, just waiting for the old coot to kick off so he could visit his Mama again. He shuddered to think that his daddy might outlast her. 

Jack’s daddy would berate him for the helicopter crash that put Jack and Brian on this mountain. Never mind that he was fighting hard to get out of this mess alive.

Up ahead, the sun shone directly into the ravine, illuminating the snow better than it had been all day, making it easier to see a route through the slot between the ridges. Brian seemed to make little progress, but it was easier for Jack to follow in his wake than it was for him to break trail. Still, his legs ached and his toes were frozen numb. He’d tuck his hands under his armpits every hundred steps or so. He’d leave them there for a minute, just to try to keep his fingers from getting frostbite.

A quick glance at his watch told Jack all that he needed to know. It was already past noon and if they continued at this slovenly rate they wouldn’t make it to the highway before the sun started to set. They’d have to rely on a search and rescue team to get them out. With no headlamps or mountaineering supplies, he and Brian were doomed on their own.

Although Jack was afraid that they might not survive another night without the warmth of a fire, he still had his pride. It had to be the most embarrassing thing that could ever happen—for a search and rescue team member to require a rescue themselves.

He didn’t want to look like some nancy boy in front of Ennis. 

He wanted to prove that he was just as capable as he had been up on the mountain when he first met Ennis. He had gotten older, but he had also gotten wiser. He still had the ability to chop wood, to ride a bull, and to kill a man if he needed to. He could deflect a punch like the one Ennis had landed when they spent their last day herding sheep. Ennis wouldn’t be so lucky next time.

Jack watched Brian come to a stop, not fifty yards in front of him. From this angle, it looked like Brian had reached some kind of drop-off. He shifted back and forth on his feet, his bad arm tucked to his side. Jack assumed he was trying to re-establish some warmth to his feet. If Jack’s feet were cold, Brian’s certainly must be as well.

Jack carefully picked his way through Brian’s tracks, using the stick to keep himself from slipping and falling. A fall would be disastrous, aggravating his ribs and making his pain even worse than it was already. He wished he could move faster. He wanted to see what obstacle had made Brian stop. Despite his aching ribs, Jack tried to push himself harder, sliding down the slope on shaky legs until he had closed half the distance to Brian.

When Brian sat down in the snow in the middle of their path, Jack called to get his attention.

“Brian, wait up!” Jack’s voice echoed through the ravine.

But Brian didn’t acknowledge him.

Jack moved forward with determined strides. When he got close enough to Brian to see why he had stopped, it was already too late. Heedless of his broken arm, Brian punched his bare fists into the snow on either side of his hips and pushed off.

Jack tried to catch up to him, to slow him down, but by the time Jack reached the edge of the drop, there was nothing he could do.

He watched helplessly as Brian glissaded to the bottom of the chute without an ice axe or crampons, no way to stop his fall. The line he took was glassy with ice and it took a moment for Jack’s eyes to adjust in the icy glare. Brian dropped out of sight for an instant, then reappeared again further down the chute. Jack caught a glimpse of him as he gained more momentum, just before he cartwheeled over and over again, his lifeless body reaching the bottom of a long straight path through the trees, ice, and rocks that lined the route of their descent.

~~~


	14. Chapter 14

_I’ll just travel blind and scout out the range and trust my luck to come through_

When Laurie returned from walking Lisa to school, she and Alma puttered around the house for the morning. They eventually decided to bake sugar cookies, letting them cool into the afternoon.

“When Lisa gets home from school, we can decorate them with icing,” Laurie said. “How does that sound?”

“Okay,” Alma said. She began to roll out the dough on the flour-covered countertop.

“You know,” Laurie said, “that new restaurant on Squaw Creek Road is going to need some help.”

“What do you mean?” Alma asked.

“Well, they’ll be hiring waitresses,” Laurie said, taking a few cookie cutters from the drawer. “They won’t expect their customers to get the food for themselves. Maybe you ought to give them a call?”

Alma bit her bottom lip. She wasn’t much for catering to the whims of others, hoping they’d feel bad for her and leave her a sizeable tip. She didn’t know what to say to Laurie’s suggestion.

“Just think about it,” Laurie said.

“Okay,” Alma said, choosing a metal cookie cutter to press into the dough, “I will. In fact, if you can give me a ride to the restaurant tomorrow, I’ll fill out an application.”

After all, Alma couldn’t expect to stay at K.E. and Laurie’s forever. Alma needed to get a job. How else would she ever be able to have the kind of lifestyle that her former sister-in-law had, with the appliances and household aids that would make her life as a housewife so much easier?

The only thing that was missing from Alma’s life was the husband.

“It’ll be fine,” Laurie said, brushing a strand of her hair from her face with flour-covered fingers.

Alma would be lying if she said she wasn’t jealous of K.E. and Laurie. Laurie had all the things that Ann Beers had hoped her own daughter would have. It was why she raised her the way she did—to be kind and respectful, chaste and obedient. Alma couldn’t believe how far she had veered from all that her mother expected she would become.

Ann was furious when Alma took the job at the Laundromat just before her divorce was finalized. Angry about the time Alma wasted, Ann believed her lessons on how to be a good wife had all been for naught. She had always made it clear that she expected Alma to have a husband, children, and a house that she could visit. No daughter of hers should need to work outside the home. To do so would mean that Ann herself was a failure. Of course that was before Alma broke the news to her that she and Ennis were no longer going to be together.

A housewife. That was the only future for which Alma was equipped. It was all that she aspired to be. She didn’t think she was capable of doing anything else, and she was probably right. Alma was never good at the subjects they taught in school and she wasn’t smart in the way that some women were.

She watched Laurie arranging the cookies expertly on the baking sheet.

No, sorting the laundry at the Riverton Laundromat was the best job Alma could ever hope to have. Ennis, of all people, had heard there was an opening there, complete with an apartment that could be worked into the deal for the right woman.

Alma supposed that Ennis did care about her to some extent, even if it was just the basic human decency to not leave her penniless after he decided to end their marriage.

Alma sifted the powdered sugar into a bowl to make the frosting. A sprinkle of it coated the countertop like snow on a winter’s day. She sighed as she remembered her first date with Ennis. He was every bit as kind and respectful then as he would later try to be during their divorce proceedings. They went to the movies at the Riverton Cinema and saw Bye Bye Birdie, a musical about a young man who was sent off to war after he had already become a famous performer.

Alma had feared what would happen if Ennis were sent off to war. That would surely ruin her chances of marrying him. It had taken her a few months to entice him into asking her on a date. She hated to see all that work going to waste. She was already so fond of him, and her hopes were high.

For their date, Alma had chosen to wear a white blouse with a pretty eyelet pattern. She stood at the mirror admiring her reflection. She blushed deep with embarrassment when she recognized that she had thoughts about the blouse’s texture and how the little eyelet flowers might feel under Ennis’s hands.

She suspected no such thing would happen on her date with Ennis. He was far too much of a gentleman.

And she was right.

He picked her up right on time and took her to the movie. When he offered to buy her popcorn, Alma was delighted because no boy had ever bought anything for her before, unless she counted those French fries from Colin Woods. If she could have kept the brown paper bag that the popcorn came in, tattered and soggy with butter, she would have. It would have been a cherished souvenir of her first date with Ennis.

They sat beside each other in the crowded cinema, their elbows and knees slightly brushing every once in a while when Alma covered her mouth to laugh at Paul Lynde and Dick van Dyke. After the movie, Ennis dropped Alma off back at her house. He walked her to the front door where her parents had left the porch light on for her. They said goodnight and made plans to see each other again.

The next day at work, Laurie teased Alma, asking her what she and Ennis did on their date.

“Of course he _didn’t_ kiss me goodnight!” Alma insisted, her cheeks turning red. “What kind of boy do you think he is?”

One of the reasons she agreed to go to the movies with Ennis was because he was so respectful. She sincerely hoped that Laurie was being sarcastic about the kissing part. Still, she couldn’t help feeling unsettled by Laurie’s tone. What if she wasn’t kidding?

Alma wiped the counter at the soda fountain and hoped K.E. was as respectful of Laurie as Ennis was of her. Alma had a hard time telling when she was being duped by someone. Especially when it was about something as serious as kissing on the first date.

Alma had good reason to believe she didn’t always understand things the same way her peers did.

When Alma was in ninth grade, she proudly showed off the new purse that Santa had left for her at Christmas, telling all the girls how she found it beneath the Christmas tree with a glittery tag addressed to her. She shifted her hip from side to side, to show off the purse.

“Surely you don’t still believe in Santa?” Debbie asked with a laugh.

Alma tucked the purse tightly under her arm and pointed her chin in the air. “Of course I do,” she insisted. “Why wouldn’t I? He comes to my house, as well as yours, every Christmas Eve.”

The girls who stood in the hallway howled with laughter.

“Don’t tell her,” came a whisper from the crowd.

“I can’t believe she doesn’t know,” said another.

“Such a baby,” another girl laughed.

The bell had already rung and Alma was worried that she would be late for class, but this was one argument she wasn’t going to lose.

“Alma,” Debbie began with a patronizing touch to Alma’s shoulder, “there’s no such thing as Santa Claus.”

“I know you might think that,” Alma said, straightening her shoulders, “but you’re very wrong.”

A burst of laughter rose from the crowd of girls, followed by their whispers again in the hallway.

Alma would set them straight. Her mother had warned her that some girls might try to get her to stop believing that Santa Claus existed. But Alma knew better than that. They were wrong, and she could prove it so.

Every Christmas Eve, Santa Claus came to the Beers’ house. George and Ann believed they were doing their children a favor, preserving some of the magic of the season in their daughter’s young minds for as long as possible. Mel Morgan, a friend of George’s from work, would don a red Santa suit, complete with a soft white beard and shiny black boots. On Christmas Eve, George and Ann would make a show of pretending not to wake the girls, while all along they did their best to rouse them from their sleep so that they might catch Santa in the act of leaving toys and gifts under the Christmas tree.

Ava and Alma would creep out of bed, lured by their parents to see the miraculous sight in their living room. Ann had whispered cautiously for the girls to keep quiet, lest they disturb the visitor to their house and he leave them nothing but a lump of coal.

Alma’s eyes grew wide when she observed the man who cheerfully removed gifts from his big brown sack and placed them beneath the tree. If she listened carefully, she could hear him breathe the names that he read off the packages as he arranged them. “This one is for Alma, and this one for Ava. Ho, ho, ho, here’s one for Ann.”

When Santa was finished, and his sack empty, the girls ducked to avoid his gaze. The girls knew Santa would be very disappointed if he caught them looking. The girls snuck back to their bedroom, thrilled that they had caught a glimpse of Santa as he carried out his job of leaving gifts for the good children of Riverton and the world beyond.

Alma was very convincing when she insisted that Santa existed to her high school friends. After all, she had seen him with her own eyes. How could they possibly think that he was a fake? Alma had this argument many times in her teen years, and it always ended the same way. Alma ran away in tears, convinced that she was right, while everyone else was wrong.

She’d get home and if she was lucky, Ann would notice her red eyes and her tear-stained cheeks.

“What’s wrong, Alma?” she would ask, concerned that her daughter had failed a test or gotten into trouble with a boy.

“They said it again,” Alma cried, the tears clinging to her eyelashes.

“What are you talking about?” Ann asked, her voice soothing.

“Santa,” Alma sobbed. “The kids at school tried to say there was no such thing as Santa again.”

“Oh, honey,” Ann said, rubbing Alma’s shoulders. “Of course there is such a thing as Santa.”

“I know,” Alma sniffed loudly.

“Did you tell them that you saw him at your house?” Ann asked.

“I did,” Alma said. “But they didn’t believe me.”

Alma wouldn’t wonder until many years later if Ann knew the damage she had done to her older daughter, by perpetuating a myth for Ava’s sake. The six years that separated Alma and Ava had proven a detriment to Alma’s maturing into a rational adult. But Ann would not be swayed. She valued preserving Ava’s sense of wonder more than she cared about Alma’s growth as a young woman.

Ava was always her favorite.

Just as she avoided Laurie’s questions about Ennis’s goodnight kisses when they were teens working at the soda fountain, Alma couldn’t bring herself to talk to Laurie about she and Ennis’s sex life when they were alone in Laurie’s kitchen.

Some things weren’t meant to be discussed with others.

Some problems were so uncomfortably personal that it was easier to wish them away and cling to a simpler understanding, no matter how naïve.

It was easier for Alma to believe that Santa was real, than to believe that her mother had betrayed her trust for so long. Ann’s influence remained strong in everything Alma did, and she never questioned what her mother taught her about Santa or about sex. After all, she had been taught that it was a sin to disobey her mother. To question Ann meant that Alma would burn in an eternal Hell with Archangel Michael’s spear jabbing her in the ribs.

~~~

Sex education begins with the study of the human reproductive system.

The female sex organs, as seen from the outside, consist of several folds of skin or tissue called the labia. These labia cover the urethra, through which urine is passed, and the entrance to the vagina. The vagina has a moist lining called the mucous membrane. Its walls lie in folds, which can be easily stretched. A membrane partly covers the entrance to the vagina. This is the hymen, also known as the maidenhead.

The uterus is a small pear-shaped organ, normally only about half the size of a fist. Below it is the vagina, and connected to it at the top are two tubes—the fallopian tubes, and two ovaries. The cervix is the narrow neck of the uterus and it extends into the vagina. The walls of the uterus are very thick, but may be stretched so that the uterus can enlarge to many times its original size during pregnancy. One end of the fallopian tube is open so that eggs, also known as ova, from the adjacent ovary may easily enter and be carried to the uterus.

The ovary is a gland in which eggs are constantly being born. Each almond-shaped ovary is about an inch and a half in length. Besides producing eggs, these glands secrete fluids into the blood which are responsible for the development of female characteristics in the other parts of the body, such as breasts, hair, and skin. But from puberty on, the primary function of the ovaries is the production of eggs. Usually only one egg reaches maturity every twenty-eight days. After reaching full development, it breaks through the ovarian wall and passes into the fallopian tube.

The fully-developed egg is only one two-hundredth of an inch diameter. When mature, each egg is capable of being fertilized and developing into a baby. Moreover, each egg carries all of the hereditary characteristics of the mother.

Since the function of the uterus is primarily that of receiving the fertilized egg, and nourishing the developing child, the walls undergo a regular cycle of preparation for this job. The lining of the uterus becomes soft and spongy, and engorged with blood and fluids. This progresses during the final stages of the development of the egg, its extrusion from the ovary and its passage through the tube.

If fertilization of the egg does not occur, the uterine wall lining breaks down and is discharged from the body as the menstrual flow. If we call this onset of menstruation the first day of the menstrual cycle, we can watch the same development as it occurs during each twenty-eight day period. After the menstrual flow stops, on about the fourth day, the uterine lining begins to build up again. Meanwhile, eggs are being formed in the ovaries. In the normal cycle, ovulation occurs on about the fourteenth day and an egg is extruded into the fallopian tube. It starts its slow passage toward the uterus, but if not fertilized, it starts to dissolve or disappear in the tube. After the twenty-eighth day, menstruation occurs again and the cycle is repeated. This is the structure and the function of the female reproductive organs.

The external male reproductive organs consist of the penis and the scrotum. The scrotum contains the testicles. The penis and testicles are connected by a long tube. This is the urethral canal. It extends from the penis past the prostate gland and the seminal vesicles, to join the tube leading from the testicles. The bladder also empties into the urethral canal.

The testicles in men correspond to the ovaries in women because they both are glands where the reproductive elements are formed. The testicle is composed of small compartments filled with two kinds of cells. One kind produces an internal secretion which is carried in the blood and results in the development of male characteristics such as skin, beard, voice, and body structure. The second, or lining cells are constantly being changed into spermatozoa. Spermatozoa are the male sex cells. These spermatozoa, or sperm cells, are microscopic single cells, which are propelled by the lashing motion of their long tails. Like the ovum, or egg of the female, each sperm cell contains all the hereditary characteristics which are passed from the father to the child.

Spermatozoa are constantly being formed in the testicles and are stored in the massive curled tubes there. If not emptied during sexual intercourse, they are periodically emptied during sleep in nocturnal emissions. Millions of spermatozoa are stored, ready for ejaculation. 

During intercourse, the penis is in a state of erection. This is caused by the spongy tissues of the penis becoming engorged with blood. The penis is inserted into the vagina and the sperm passes through the ducts where fluids from the glands are added to form the semen. The semen then flows through the urethral canal, and is deposited into the female vagina.

Male sperm are deposited at the upper end of the vagina, near the cervix. They begin moving up into the uterus. Sperm may remain active here for several days. The sperm move into the tubes and approach the egg. Normally, fertilization takes place while the egg is in the tube.

After one spermatozoa enters the egg, no others can enter. The tail drops off. The nuclei of sperm and egg merge and human development begins.

~~~

There was nothing Ennis could salvage from the wreck—nothing.

After ascertaining that the body lashed into the litter was Davis Wentworth, he got on the walkie-talkie.

“Come in, Jeff. This is Ennis,” he said, depressing the button on the transmitter.

The speaker crackled and popped.

“Come on,” Ennis pleaded, tapping the device. “Now’s not the time to lose the signal.”

Ennis sat in the snow outside the chopper and took some of the pressure off his feet. He had been going strong, breaking trail for more than half a day and he was utterly exhausted. He looked at the snowy landscape at the head of the ravine thinking maybe if he were at a higher elevation, he’d get a better signal.

Just then, the walkie-talkie burst into life.

“Ennis? This is Jeff. Ennis, come in,” Jeff’s voice crackled through the wintry air.

Ennis jumped to his feet, in hopes that the additional height would make Jeff’s voice come in clearer.

“Jeff,” he said. “I’ve found the chopper. Over.” 

“I’m sorry, Ennis,” Jeff tripped over his words. “Are there bodies?”

“No, no,” Ennis said, his eyes scanning the arrow tamped out by footprints in the snow that led from the chopper. “They’re not here.”

“What do you mean? Where are they?” Jeff asked.

“The chopper’s wrecked—more than wrecked. It looks like an avy pushed it down the ravine. There’s nothing here, just part of the cockpit and pieces of metal. Wentworth’s body is here. He’s dead,” Ennis said, kicking at a length of plastic that was once an integral part of the aircraft, but now was nothing more than a piece of scrap. “I see their tracks. Jack and Brian. They must be trying to hike out. There’s some blood.”

“Hang tight, Ennis,” Jeff said. “I’m almost to the top of the second ridge. Where are you at?”

“I’m over in that narrow valley that comes off the main peak, between the ridge that I last talked to you from, and the third ridge to the south, the ravine that empties out near The Mount Elbert Lodge,” Ennis said. 

“Okay, that probably explains why Jim and the spotter haven’t seen anything,” Jeff said.

“It’s pretty clogged with pine. A bad place to be if you want to be seen from the air,” Ennis said looking through the trees to see the glint of narrow sky between the branches.

“I’ll tell Wayne that he can call off the air search. I’m almost to the top of the last ridge you went over. I’m making good time following your tracks. If you want to wait for me to catch up, you can,” Jeff said. “It shouldn’t take me more than an hour.”

“I can’t do that,” Ennis said. He knew he had to go find Jack. Waiting for Jeff would kill him. “Not when I’m this close.”

“I hear ya,” Jeff said.

“You’ll catch up soon enough at this rate,” Ennis said, his breath fogging the display on the walkie-talkie.

“Okay, I’ll radio Wayne and have him dispatch a team to the highway. They ought to be able to set up a staging area between the Mount Elbert Lodge and La Plata Gulch,” Jeff said. “That’ll get them in a good position to meet us with a team.”

“Sounds good. I’ll see you when you catch up,” Ennis said.

Ennis clipped the walkie-talkie into its holder on his pack.

“I’m coming for you, Jack,” he said as he descended into the ravine, following Jack and Brian’s trail of footprints and blood.

Although he had rested some at the chopper, the muscles in Ennis’s thighs burned as he plunged through the track of softening snow made by Brian and Jack’s footprints. The work of breaking trail on snowshoes was almost as difficult as it would have been had the men’s postholes not been there, guiding Ennis’s way toward them… toward Jack.

Ennis’s ski poles kept him steady as he took measured strides. His arms ached from holding himself back, keeping himself from tumbling down the valley, out of control in a blur of snow and ice. He hoped Jack would still be alive when he reached him. As a ranger, he had seen what exposure to extreme conditions could do to a body. It could wear even the most physically fit person down real fast. He followed the two sets of tracks, hoping that the blood wasn’t Jack’s.

He needed to tell Jack everything that had happened to him after they left Signal.

Jack needed to be alive. He needed to hear it.

After Jack drove off that awful day when they came down off the mountain, Ennis had nearly puked his guts out in an alley, his paper bag clenched in his grip, just like the grip Jack had on Ennis’s insides. He didn’t know what the hell he was going to do then, just like he wasn’t sure what he wanted to do now. At least he was a little closer to finding out the answers today. Ennis wondered if maybe all those years had to pass by for him to change and choose a different path than the one he had taken when he threw that punch. Maybe the lost years were a necessary evil.

He was angry that Aguirre had ordered them to come down early, but it wasn’t the money that bothered him most. His time with Jack had been cut short. He didn’t realize it then, but fucking Jack was better than it would ever be with Alma.

He broke his downhill stride and took a few breaths to calm his heart rate. He needed to cut himself some slack.

How was he supposed to know how things would be with Alma when he squatted in the alleyway heaving up the contents of his stomach?

Before he went up to Brokeback, before he met Jack, one date had led to another. First, the movies, then a double date with K.E. and Laurie. He had met Alma’s parents. They seemed like fine upstanding folks, not that Ennis had much to compare them to, having lost his own parents when he was still a kid. Before he knew it, his stint at Richardson’s Dairy had ended and it was time to report to Farm and Ranch employment for a summer job. He figured he had a good thing going, so he got down on one knee and asked Alma to be his wife. No ring in his pocket, he kissed her on the cheek to seal the deal.

Ennis dug in with his poles and caught himself from tumbling headlong down the slope. Instead, he fell back onto his ass in the snow. He was moving so fast, his heart pumping like a jackrabbit’s in his rib cage. If he hadn’t quit smoking, he’d think he was going to have a heart attack.

If he had known then, what he knew now, things would have been different.

They’d have to be.

He never would have let himself get that far with Alma. He would have at least kissed her on the mouth, instead of treating her like she was a fragile piece of glass, worthy of protecting and shielding from the whole wide world. If he had only admitted the truth to himself then… then he would have known the difference between what he felt with Jack and what he felt with Alma. He convinced himself that he had a good excuse for avoiding those feelings before he went up to Brokeback. But afterward? No, sir. Ennis was a first-rate failure at coming clean to himself.

For the first time, since believing John Twist about Jack being dead, he had a chance to do things right… the way he should have done them in the first place. After four long years of regretting his choices, Ennis had a second chance waiting for him somewhere down this slope of freshly fallen snow. A clean slate waited, snowy white as a plain sheet of paper, and he could write the rest of his story on it.

Maybe it was time for Ennis to stop blaming Jack for what had happened between him and Alma.

Ennis got to his feet and started moving again. Each step through the snow was more excruciating than the last because the rest had allowed his muscles to relax for too long. He had to get his blood flowing again.

He moved downhill with a new determination. He wanted to reach Jack so he could try to put the blame where it belonged. He still wasn’t certain that he knew for sure where the fault lay, but he was ready to find the answers to the questions that had plagued for the years after they left the mountain.

Ennis followed the footsteps through the snow, a long winding trail of white, sandwiched between the walls of the ravine. Up ahead, the ravine looked like it would drop off into nothingness. The footprints Ennis had been following seemed to stop. If not for Ennis’s farsightedness, he might not have noticed something odd in the distance. He initially dismissed it, telling himself that it was simply a broken spruce branch that had been tossed by the wind into the snowbank at an odd angle. But as he got closer, he recognized it as an article of clothing. He squinted into the afternoon light that had finally made it into the ravine.

It was a green Forest Service hat.

~~~


	15. Chapter 15

_I’ll sit by my campfire each nomadic night and muse of the present and past_

“Brian!”

Jack thought he was going to heave up the contents of his stomach… what was left of them, anyway. He had scrambled down the slope, snow flying into the air as his boots skidded along the track that Brian had made.

When he reached the edge of the drop, he was furious that Brian had taken it upon himself to glissade down the steep incline. Now there was nothing he could do to save him. He stood at the edge, his hands tugging on his own hair in grief, his hat lost in the process.

Jack dug his heels into the snow, testing each footstep for some modicum of security as he descended. It would have been faster to slide on his ass, but seeing how Brian had lost control and landed in a bloody heap, he wasn’t willing to take the chance. He had to stay strong. He had to get down safely if he was going to have any hope of seeing Ennis again.

Step by step, he made his way downward, digging the branch into the snow to keep his balance. His legs trembled with fear that he would fall backwards and begin to slide out of control. His ribs couldn’t take more punishment. Each step required his absolute concentration. Although his nerves were frayed with the knowledge that Brian might not have survived the fall and he might not make it out of the woods before dark, he still persevered.

When he reached the bottom of the incline, he could nearly run on top of the snow. The adrenaline from seeing Brian’s fall had made him temporarily forget about the ache in his chest and his freezing fingers. Brian’s body had flattened a track some hundred yards long from when he first started to slide. It ended where his body stopped at the end of the runout. His body had acquired new contusions in its awkward descent and the wound on his head had split open again, the seep of blood leaving its mark on the pristine snow.

“Brian?” Jack dropped to his knees beside Brian’s motionless body.

Jack slid his hand beneath Brian’s neck and tilted his head back. The blood had slowed to a trickle through the gash in his forehead. Brian’s lips were parted and his eyes were open to the sky. Only then, did Jack notice the clear fluid leaking from Brian’s head. The back of his skull was split open like a watermelon.

Jack listened for breathing, but there was nothing. He worked a hand beneath Brian’s shirts and placed it to Brian’s chest. The skin was eerily cold.

No pulse.

Jack debated whether to start first aid, but decided it would be ridiculous to try. Even if he could restore Brian’s breathing, they were miles from the nearest road, and Jack was doubtful that their rescue would come soon.

There was nothing to be done.

Even if a helicopter dropped from the sky at that very moment, Brian had no chance of survival.

“Aww… fuck!” Jack said as he searched for a solution he could live with.

It wouldn’t be the first time that a life or death decision was left to him. He hated it when he was in Vietnam, and he hated it now. At least in the jungle, the decision was easier. He had his soldier buddies who would support him. Here on a snow-covered mountain in the middle of nowhere, he had no one to rely on but himself.

Only two years earlier, he was sweeping the countryside for Vietcong, north of Saigon. On the ground, there was gunfire and he saw a battalion getting hit hard by mortar fire. It would have been so easy for him to swoop in and rescue the fallen Americans. He hovered for tense moments in the stagnant air, the tropical humidity sopping his clothing and skin. He wanted to try for a rescue, but in the end, he couldn’t risk himself and the gunners in his chopper. The image of the suffering ground troops still haunted his dreams. No matter how hard he wished he could have saved the wounded men, he had to acknowledge that he was forced into making a split-second decision. Sometimes you didn’t get a second chance. You had to make the right decision the first time, or face the consequences. 

Thoughts of Ennis crept into Jack’s mind. They fought for dominance over Jack’s grief for Brian and the shock that he wouldn’t make it off the mountain when he seemed so strong back at the chopper.

Maybe Ennis had learned some of the same things Jack had over the years they spent apart.

Maybe Ennis had changed his mind about their situation. Maybe he could make the right decision if he got the chance to do it over again.

Maybe Jack could laugh someday when he showed Ennis the shirt he stole from him on their last morning together when they had to bring the sheep down from Brokeback.

Maybe they’d laugh about it over a beer…

Jack pushed Brian’s eyelids. They slid easily over the surface of his eyes. Jack sat in the snow. He hugged his knees to his chest, thankful that Brian’s eyes stayed shut, the cold weather making them freeze in place.

Jack wasn’t sure how much time passed before he realized he needed to collect himself and get on with the business of getting down the mountain. Down to where Ennis might be waiting for him.

Ennis.

This whole bullshit thing was all Ennis’s fault anyway. Haunting his dreams, fucking with his mind. If Jack hadn’t been distracted by running into Ennis again, so unexpectedly, maybe he would have concentrated more when the fuel gushed out of the chopper, leaving him and Brian without enough juice to make it to BVH, or to the road for that matter.

Jack got to his feet, wincing at the pain in his ribs. After he took one last look at Brian, he set off downhill.

The sun had crept behind the ravine wall on his right. With some luck, he’d be able to see the snow standing out in contrast to the darkening forest, but for how long? How long would he be able to walk without a headlamp? He searched the sky, hoping there would be a bright moon tonight to guide his way.

He had plowed through the snow for about a quarter of a mile beyond where he had left Brian’s body when he felt a surge of warmth rush through his limbs. He foolishly thought it was because he had been thinking of Ennis. He unzipped his parka.

~~~

When Lisa got home from school, the girls spent the afternoon decorating the cookies with frosting and candy sprinkles. They spent hours glazing the tops of the golden disks. Laurie had assembled chicken divan for dinner and set it in the oven to bake until K.E. arrived home from work.

At the kitchen table, Alma and Laurie shared a pot of coffee. The low hum of the television droned in the living room while the girls worked on their coloring books.

Laurie rested her cup in the saucer.

“So, Alma,” she started, nibbling on one of the broken cookie scraps that she had placed on a small plate between them. “Have you thought about dating again?”

The question caught Alma off-guard.

It seemed inappropriate for her former sister-in-law to suggest such a thing to her. As K.E.’s wife, Laurie would be expected to support Ennis, regardless of her friendship with Alma. Blood was thicker than water in the Del Mar family, just as it was in her own.

Alma stiffened with discomfort at the reminder that she failed to keep her sacred vows of _’til death do us part._

“Never thought much about it,” Alma said, her eyes shifting to the plate of cookie remnants.

“Well, you’re still young,” Laurie said, licking the sugar from her fingers. “Ain’t no reason to give up on finding true love just yet.”

Alma tried to smile, an automatic reaction that she had cultivated from childhood. She put her best face forward, despite the difficult emotions the question aroused in her. Alma had always taken pride in her polite demeanor.

“I don’t think so,” Alma said. “I don’t think I could do that.”

“I don’t see why not,” Laurie said. “Why, you’re just a young woman. You have your whole life ahead of you.”

Alma shook her head. “No, it’s not that.”

“Well, what is it then?” Laurie asked brightly.

Alma had to give Laurie credit for optimism, but she knew better what her own future held for her. She pinched her napkin between her fingers while she thought of what to say.

“I guess I haven’t had much success in attracting a boy. I don’t see it being any different now,” Alma said, knowing she couldn’t share the whole truth about what she felt.

“Alma…” Laurie said, stroking Alma’s hair as it swept down over her face. “Why don’t you make yourself up pretty? Put on some lipstick or try tweezin’ your eyebrows?”

Alma pushed Laurie’s hand away. “Don’t know how to do none of that,” Alma said, hoping it would be excuse enough.

“You would sure be pretty if you fixed yourself up nice,” Laurie said.

Alma shuddered. The last thing she wanted was for something to make her look more attractive.

Tweezed eyebrows? Alma cringed at the thought. She could never do that. She’d look like some kind of whore if she went around trying to draw a boy’s attention to herself. She had already been married and divorced before she was twenty years old. There was no way that she’d go through all of that again. She’d make herself out to be a fool. Worse still, if thinking about private body parts was a sin in high school, it was a hundred times worse now that she was divorced. The Bible had rules against things like that. _'Til death do you part._ There was no excuse for doing anything different. The pits of Hell awaited her already for getting divorced. She wasn’t going to make things any worse by offering herself up like she wanted carnal knowledge of anyone else besides Ennis.

Ennis was enough for her. It had taken everything she had to catch Ennis and make her Mama proud of her. 

She had loved him because he married her.

She still loved him, because she had no choice. She had gone into her marriage full bore, and there was no way to change that now. It was a done deal. She could never let that happen to her again.

Alma wished she could use Laurie’s suggestions, but they only made her hurt worse. She had her chance at being married… and now it was gone.

The second time Ennis kissed Alma was before the preacher in the Riverton Community Church. Snow had come early in ’63, although it didn’t last. Ennis had returned a whole month sooner than he had expected from his job with Farm and Ranch Employment. Alma didn’t mind. It meant they could push up the date of the wedding. No need to wait another month until she finally would have a husband. She looked forward to the status that it would bring to her, especially in the eyes of her mother.

Alma and Ennis paid the fee for the marriage license and got their blessing in the very same church where the Beers family attended Sunday services every week. Before she knew it, the ceremony had ended and not long afterward so had the potluck in the church basement.

The day had been a long and tiring one for Alma and Ennis both, but that didn’t stop Ennis from carrying Alma over the threshold of their room at the Ol’ Wyoming Motel. Alma put her purse down on the nightstand and began to take off her smooth white gloves. Her mother had given them to her the night before, along with a talk about a bride’s responsibility on her wedding night. Something old, something new.

Alma was so embarrassed to listen to her mother’s words and all they implied. She assured her that she had learned what her duties were, thinking back to her friend Janet from high school and the abundance of knowledge she had shared. Alma figured she would just let Ennis do what he needed to do and she could just close her eyes if she didn’t want to look. She could just go along with whatever it was that newly married folks had been doing for hundreds of years.

In truth, she was afraid to look.

She didn’t know quite what to expect, never having seen a penis in real life before. She was sure it would be covered with hair because that’s what the nurse said in the Grange Hall at the Future Homemakers of America meeting that she went to a few years back when they told her about her monthly visitor and how babies were made. She was prepared for that, although Ennis wasn’t the hairiest fellow she had ever seen, judging from the scarcity of fuzz that crept up from his chest to the collar of his shirt.

A penis wouldn’t be at all like the rubbery thing the man showed her that distant day not long after the meeting at the Grange Hall. Alma had been walking home alone. Janet had stayed out of school that day, sick with a cold. When Alma had to stay late to go over the questions she got wrong on her math test, she was on her own to walk home on the uncrowded streets of Riverton.

She had just turned the corner onto King Street from Cooper Road, nearly a mile and a half from home, when a car pulled alongside her. Alma stopped and clutched her schoolbooks to her chest while the driver leaned across the front seat of the car to roll down the passenger’s side window. Alma thought for sure he was going to ask for directions. Still she knew not to stand too close to the car, lest she be kidnapped and murdered like poor Bobby Greenlease.

“How are you today, Miss?” the man asked.

“I’m fine,” Alma said respectfully to the stranger. The man looked to be in his twenties, older than the boys Alma knew in school, but younger than Alma’s father.

“Do you know where Hancock Street is?” he asked.

Alma thought hard. She had never heard of Hancock Street before. “No, I’m sorry Mister, I don’t know.”

After a pause, the man asked, “Have you ever seen one of these?”

Alma leaned forward to see what the man was talking about. He was gripping some sort of pink tube in his left hand. He held it in his grasp between the front of his pants and the steering wheel.

Alma shook her head no, and the man laughed. Straightening up, Alma gave the man a polite wave goodbye and continued to walk home. The man drove off in search of someone else to ask for directions. He’d have a hard time of it at this hour, most kids were already home from school and it was too early for folks to be leaving work to come home for dinner.

Until Alma saw Ennis naked, some five years later, it had never crossed Alma’s mind that the stranger on Cooper Street had shown her his penis. She had been told that penises were very long, so they could deposit the semen into the vagina. They were also covered completely in hair. She knew this much to be true. The filmstrip that she saw back at the Grange Hall explained that hair grew on boys’ privates when they entered puberty. The nurse had confirmed this fact when she answered the girls’ questions. Surely a penis didn’t look like a fat pink tube.

Yet here was Ennis, with a penis on him as pink and as naked as a bald baby head. No matter how malformed it was without the hair she had envisioned, it didn’t stop Alma from wanting to complete the act that would finalize her marriage and make it official. She let Ennis pull off her wedding dress and toss it onto the matted shag carpeting. She pulled back the bedspread and slid beneath the covers, shimmying her panties down to the bottom of the bed.

Ennis got underneath the blankets and crawled between Alma’s legs, supporting himself with his hands that moved up the mattress until they were beside her head. Alma felt his surprisingly hairless penis brush against the nest of her pubic hair and a tingle of trepidation washed over her. She flushed with embarrassment over her own nakedness that had been hidden for so long.

Ennis bracketed her face with his hands and the white flowered headpiece that matched her wedding dress slipped off her head and onto the pillow. He kissed her deeply, using his tongue.

Alma struggled to breathe. She marveled at what changes had occurred in Ennis since they had been pronounced man and wife. His passion was certainly a far cry from the chaste kiss and tender moments they shared before Ennis had left to wrangle sheep that summer. She felt him draw up onto his knees. His penis drove at the area _down below,_ that forbidden part of Alma’s body that had eluded touch ever since that day in the bathroom back at her folk’s house.

Ennis surged forward as the tip of his penis met with her privates.

Alma braced herself, the soles of her feet planted firmly on the mattress.

There was the prod of naked flesh on flesh.

Then, nothing.

“Ennis?” Alma asked.

“Uh, yeah, just a minute,” Ennis said.

Alma felt the bed vibrate as Ennis gave something a shake.

Alma had never felt so exposed in all her life. She bit down on her bottom lip while she waited for Ennis to insert his penis into her. Every time Ennis lunged forward, no matter that his penis was rigid before it ever touched her, as soon as their two body parts made contact, his penis became as soft as a worm waiting to be put on a hook.

Tears came to Alma’s eyes when she remembered the frustration of that night. It was supposed to be the happiest day of her life, the day she had finally reached her goal of being married, but she could only cry about what she had done. She had relinquished her chastity for nothing. And in the end, she didn’t even have a husband to show for it.

“Alma?” Laurie asked. “Alma?”

Alma took a deep breath.

“You could always ask a boy out yourself. No sense waiting around for some dummy to get the idea that you’re interested in him,” Laurie said.

“No,” Alma said with a blush to her cheeks. She wondered what kind of wild animals had raised Laurie that she would ever have suggested such a thing.

~~~

A war is waged between opposing forces. A battlefield stretches out before the combatants, whether they are willing or not. The lines are drawn on the plains of time. It doesn’t matter which participant is ready and which one might need to gather all his strength to merely take a step forward. They pick at each other, decisions made and ground conceded. Sometimes one side is stronger, much stronger. The weak becomes overpowered, as unfair as it may seem. Everything has its reason.

Like a clump of earth left to bake in the sun, constantly pelted by the winds and weather, anything will break down over time when left to nature’s devices or when pummeled by the whims of mankind. 

Sometimes, when one side is beaten down too much, there is no resistance. The combatant sways to whichever side pushes the strongest in that very instant, without regard for right or wrong.

Grains of sand seep into the cracks until the exterior deteriorates. The exterior breaks down and admits the will of the abrasions to its core. When time passes, the soft innards that were once protected by the facade become further decimated by the wind, the sands, the light.

It’s a matter of exposure.

The clump of living organism has no chance to survive when exposed to the thing that will hurt it the most, the thing that will do the most damage over time. In time, anything will break down.

Like a scarecrow tied to a buck-rail fence. Or a desire that flows like a river through a cowboy’s veins. Or a conviction beaten into a sinner’s head. Resistance can’t last forever.

Eventually the resolve breaks down. The flesh deteriorates under the golden sky. The passion ignites and blazes brightly through the forces of society that stand in the path of its conflagration. The flames of Hell beckon stronger than a call to righteousness, or the call to righteousness beckons louder than the flames of Hell.

When the opposing forces are equally matched, there is another battle that takes place. No one can answer which side will win out in the end. Sometimes both, sometimes neither. A compromise, or a veritable Armageddon.

The body may break down, but the spirit breaks last. Long after the body and the flesh deteriorates until nothing remains, the human spirit is the last thing to fade. It withers away, defeated, and becomes a part of the earth.

A war is waged between opposing forces, until finally, something gives.

~~~


	16. Chapter 16

_And follow the spire of that soul-stirring light ‘til I reach that one valley at last_

Ennis burst forward on his snowshoes, despite his bone-deep exhaustion. When he reached the top of the cliff, he bent to the snow and picked up the green Forest Service hat, juggling it between his mittened hands.

“Jack,” he whispered.

His eyes widened when they rested on the base of the cliff, where a body lay.

“Oh, Jesus,” Ennis said, his breath condensing in the wintry air. In the distance, the sun dipped behind the west wall of the ravine. He dropped the hat to the snow.

“Jack,” Ennis yelled, the sound of his voice echoing down the valley.

It was no use. The body at the base of the cliff wasn’t going to move anytime soon.

“Please, don’t let it be Jack,” Ennis prayed to the mountain winds.

Ennis could see where the body had obviously gone over the edge of the cliff. Another track led down the incline to the left, where the slope wasn’t as steep. The track of postholes leading further down the valley proved that, of the two men who left the chopper, one was still alive when they reached this point in their descent. Neither man would have left the other if there was a chance that they both could have gotten out of the woods alive. Now, one of them was likely dead. Ennis hoped with all his might that it wasn’t Jack.

Ennis wrenched the walkie-talkie from its clip and switched it on. As the radio searched for a signal, Ennis fought the urge to plunge mindlessly down the cliff, to confirm his worst fear as quickly as possible. He might be able to trust the poles to slow his fall, but he quickly recognized that he needed to stay level-headed for a little while longer.

The walkie-talkie crackled with static. Ennis punched a button and held the device over his head, hoping it would make a difference. He wanted to tell Jeff what he had found, and advise him of the situation.

The static frustrated Ennis to no end. His legs were shaking with nervousness over which rescue team member he might find at the base of the cliff.

He all but gave up getting a signal on the walkie-talkie, tossing it onto the mittens that he had stripped off and set on the tip of one snowshoe to keep dry. Jeff would be along soon anyway. He was a half-hour away at most. Ennis thought about waiting for him, but while his mind raced, his fingers worked to unfasten the straps on his snowshoes before upending his pack into the snow to look for his crampons. He dragged the clanging metal contraptions across the snow and lashed them to his boots. His fingers ached with cold from the time they were exposed, bare to the elements.

Once he had managed to fasten the buckles on his crampons, he jettisoned his snowshoes over the edge, and watched them skitter to the base of the cliff. He stuffed his gear back into his pack, draining the last few drops of coffee from his Thermos.

One more time, he listened to the static on the walkie-talkie before he switched it off and clipped it back into its holder. With a ski pole in each hand, he turned to face the slope he had just descended and lowered his gaze to watch his feet as his crampon’s front points bit into the icy face of the cliff.

Step by step, he lowered himself down. “Please don’t let it be Jack,” he breathed, repeating his mantra with every kick of his toes into the ice.

The cold and hunger had begun to take their toll on Ennis. He fought to stay vertical as he descended, his feet cramped from the strain. It was difficult enough for Ennis to climb down using crampons and poles, he couldn’t imagine what a hell it was for a climber without any gear.

Right pole, left pole, kick right, kick left.

“Please don’t let it be Jack.”

He lost another foot of elevation.

Right pole, left pole, kick right, kick left.

The sequence repeated so many times that Ennis lost count, until finally he stood on the level snow at the base of the cliff.

Ennis followed in the steps of the survivor who had descended before him, plodding through the deep snow to the body that lay motionless. He knelt in the tamped down snow near the head of the body, feeling guilty for gasping with relief when he discovered Brian, the paramedic from Twin Lakes who had been in Jack’s chopper for Davis Wentworth’s rescue.

A… airway…

B… breathing…

C… circulation…

He was a good kid, and Ennis would have taken time to mourn him, if he hadn’t needed to find Jack.

He snuffled back a drip of snot and unbuckled his crampons.

The ravine was completely in shadow now. It would be getting colder soon and his window of time to find Jack alive was running out. He turned the walkie-talkie on and listened to the static while he lashed his snowshoes back onto his boots.

Ennis recognized the fact that now he’d be following _Jack’s_ footprints as they led away from Brian’s body. He rubbed his hands together, thankful that he had the mittens to keep them warm.

“Jeff? Come in. This is Ennis,” Ennis gave the walkie-talkie another try. He knew his chances of reaching Jeff were slim from his sheltered position. Still, he would have liked to have warned him that there was a body to recover, but only infernal static came through the device.

Ennis watched the horizon. How far was he from the road? A mile? Two miles?

He clipped the walkie-talkie back into place. It wouldn’t be long now before he found Jack, dead or alive. He made his way down the slope as fast as he could, following in _Jack’s_ footsteps. His mind raced faster than his feet.

How far could Jack possibly have gotten? He couldn’t have made it to the road yet. He had to be somewhere close, maybe just beyond the next tree Ennis used when he dead reckoned his way down the ravine. He could feel it.

And what was he going to say to the man when he found him? Ennis took deep breaths through his mouth as he negotiated the postholes Jack’s feet had made in the snow.

He’d have to tell Jack that it didn’t work out between him and Alma.

Ennis still wasn’t sure whether he could bring himself to tell Jack why.

There was no easy way of putting it.

His wedding night with Alma was disastrous. He would never have guessed that their first night together was going to turn out the way it did, not in a million years. Although, in hindsight, he should have known. No matter how many times he tried to drive his cock into Alma that night, he wouldn’t stay hard. As soon as his cock touched her skin, his erection withered down to nothing. If someone had told him that Alma was going to be so soft and slippery that it would be impossible to get the same kind of friction that he got while driving into Jack’s tight hot ass, he might have guessed that he had a problem.

To Ennis, having sex with Alma felt like ramming his cock against the innards of a gutted sheep. 

He felt bad for her, at first. She tried to be encouraging, in her own way. She held still. She didn’t complain. There was no way she would have known how to do any different, not with the way her folks raised her. Ennis doubted she had even kissed a boy before she met him. He could hardly blame her from becoming hysterical when things didn’t go as planned.

She spent most of the night in tears.

And it only got worse from there.

It took a few months of trying before it became obvious to Ennis that it wasn’t going to work. They simply couldn’t have sex, no matter how many times they tried. He’d be aroused and hard, but as soon as the head of his cock touched Alma, he’d go soft again. One hungover morning, while laying asphalt with a road crew, he listened while one of his buddies described a similar problem that happened to his brother. The brother went to see some kind of shrink that handled sex problems. He wasn’t sure if it worked.

When Ennis brought it up to Alma that night, she raged at him through a veil of tears. How dare he suggest that they discuss such a personal thing with a stranger? Her tears turned to fury as she launched at him the only thing she could get her hands on—a porcelain cup from the set of dishes her parents had given them as a wedding gift. He could only watch and wait for Alma to calm down, the sobs wracking her body long after suppertime had passed, the bits of shattered white ceramic tossed into the wastebasket.

He wasn’t sure when he finally figured it all out. Hell, he still wasn’t sure if he had figured anything out. He could only guess why he preferred the slide of his cock into a warm wet mouth with some stubble to scrape at his thighs, the feel of a man beneath his hands as he drove into him, or the burn of a cock pounding into him while he wept for joy, arms folded beneath his sobbing mouth.

He couldn’t let Alma live like they had for the first months of their marriage, so he cut her loose. He let her go so she could find someone new.

Only, it didn’t quite work out that way.

He found a lawyer and filled out the papers, saying that he would take the blame. That only made Alma cry more. He never meant for her to feel so bad. Christ, it wasn’t her fault.

Naturally, he blamed Jack for his problem. But he couldn’t tell Alma that.

If not for Jack, he wouldn’t be queer, Ennis was sure of it. He drove all the way to Lightning Flat to tell Jack just that, after he signed the last of the divorce paperwork in the lawyer’s office. He wavered between wanting to punch Jack’s lights out or wanting to throw him down in the nearest hay-filled stall at his daddy’s so he could have his way with him. That was up until Jack’s daddy told him Jack was killed in Vietnam.

Since that day, Ennis had lived in regret. Now, as he snowshoed his way down a Colorado mountain, he had to adjust to the idea that there wasn’t a lick of truth in Jack’s daddy’s story. It was easy to figure out why he lied to Ennis. His daddy couldn’t care less about Jack. Ennis knew why. It was because he was queer. Folks didn’t react well to that particular idea, least of all fathers.

Ennis’s Pa sure made his thoughts about queers known. Jack’s daddy wasn’t much different.

Thinking Jack was dead, Ennis took one job after the other, amounting to nothing, going nowhere, until the one day he went south from the Tetons to the Rockies for some work with the Forest Service. He dug ditches and felled trees on a fire suppression line outside of Denver. Ennis took to it like a fish to water.

The work was easy, compared to what he’d done on a farm or a ranch. He got to be alone most of the time. The alone time made him think a lot about things. And the not-alone time put him in the company of some like-minded fellas. Denver was a long way from Riverton, that was for sure. The city boys didn’t think twice about rolling around in the grass behind the cabin, or trading blow jobs on a cold winter night in the backcountry.

In ’64, he spent the whole summer training with a young intern, Billy Reed, before the Forest Service shipped him off to Crater Lake. Billy’s idea of training included fooling around with Ennis behind his wife’s back.

Ennis’s divorce hadn’t come through final yet. Ennis felt guilty every time Billy and he went out on patrol and one thing led to another. In the fields of blooming columbine, he couldn’t help think that his marriage to Alma would have worked, if not for meeting Jack in the summer of ’63. He cared for Alma, he truly did. No matter how many times he tried to think of a way that he could make things better for Alma, either by introducing her to an eligible bachelor or finding her a job at the Riverton Laundromat, he was met with her unfettered rage.

She’d break down and wail inconsolably, or she’d throw things, or scream at him until she was hoarse. 

After the divorce was final, he had to stop caring about Alma. It hurt too much. He hoped she had found happiness back in Riverton, maybe she found someone else to marry.

Ennis was making steady progress through the ravine. He’d pause every so often and turn around, looking for Jeff to catch up. It would be easier for Jeff to follow Ennis’s tracks than it was for Ennis to follow Jack’s postholes. The sunlight was fading from the sky, the ravine growing darker as it plunged to lower elevations. Ennis was starting to have trouble seeing what was ahead of him, although the slope was covered in newly-fallen snow that was marred only by Jack’s footprints.

He had been so engrossed in putting one foot in front of the other that he barely noticed the discarded parka until his snowshoe had trampled it.

“Jack!” Ennis yelled, his throat dry from not drinking enough fluids in the dry mountain environment.

He stooped to pull the parka out from beneath his snowshoe. It was Jack’s. It was the Forest Service parka Ennis had seen him wearing during the rescue high up on the mountain.

“Jack!” Ennis yelled again.

Fear overtook him. If Jack had been stripping off his clothes, it might be too late to save him.

“Jack!”

Ennis took a dozen steps forward, and then another dozen, and there he was… Jack, sitting at the base of a Bristlecone Pine. In an instant, the choice flashed through Ennis’s mind. He could blame Jack, and all they shared together on that other distant mountain where they herded sheep. He could blame him for Alma and for Billy and all the others that came in between. In the past, it had been so easy to blame Jack. It was even easier to blame him when Ennis thought Jack was dead.

But when he approached the man who sat at the base of the tree and looked into those blue eyes again, he found that his urge to lay blame had been replaced with an uneasy acceptance.

~~~

Jack felt like he was burning up.

He had been walking since first light, descending through the heavy snow. The exertion had taken its toll, using up whatever he had in his reserves. He could barely feel the ache in his ribs anymore as he plunged forward through the drifts that had accumulated in the ravine.

He had foolishly taken off most of his outerwear, trying to cool off. No matter that he knew exactly how wrong it was, what his body was doing in reaction to the conditions he faced, he was powerless to behave otherwise. If he sat in the snow, maybe the chill would seep into his bones and rid him of the feeling that he was on fire. He had already stripped down to his T-shirt somewhere along the way. If he could just get his boots off, he could get his pants to slide off over his feet. It was never an issue to spend the day in boxer shorts and boots alone when he was in Vietnam, so he sincerely hoped that the good people of Colorado wouldn’t mind. Not that he had seen any citizens wandering around in the woods since he left Brian at the base of the cliff.

He sure the fuck wished that he’d run into Ennis Del Mar right about now. He turned his head from side to side, looking for a sign of human encroachment in this wild ravine. There was nothing to save him. Ennis would help him out, wouldn’t he? He was a friend, after all. Just so long as he didn’t sucker punch him again, pissed off at something for which Jack had no answer.

It had taken four long years for Jack to figure out why Ennis had such an attitude that last morning on Brokeback. Being in the Army had exposed Jack to all different kinds of guys from all different walks of life. You had fellas like him, who wore their emotions on the outside, and then you had fellas like Ennis who kept everything packed away like napalm in a flamethrower, just waiting to be released so it could destroy everything in sight. Ennis’s violent outburst had taken Jack by surprise, since he was only nineteen years old and had just spent the best summer of his life roaming the mountainside with Ennis. Like he had been the previous summer, he was excited to get away from his folks, especially his overbearing daddy who seemed to find fault with everything Jack did.

It was one thing to be working outdoors, keeping the sheep together, and managing to eat three square meals each day. That was what he expected when he signed on for his second year at Joe Aguirre’s. He didn’t expect that he’d be assigned to work with Ennis.

What started as a regular working relationship soon evolved into something very different one night after reducing the contents of a bottle of Old Rose to a particularly low level. Jack was still half-drunk and passed out on the bedroll when he reached for Ennis’s hand and shoved it down his pants. Ennis got the message. From there on out, Jack’s memories of that summer were filled with everything that happened next. Memories of being torn into by someone who couldn’t wait to slide his hard cock into him. Memories of sweat-slicked skin and grunts that matched the stutter of Ennis’s hips. Memories of a finger dipped between Ennis’s pale cheeks while Jack whispered words of encouragement. Ennis was one bull who needed a type of taming that Jack discovered he was adept at giving.

It seemed so long ago.

Jack sank into the snow and worked on the laces to his boots.

His fingers were tingling with the burn, so he shoved them into the snow to cool for a minute, before taking a stab at the laces again, knowing damn well it wasn’t something he should be doing. Inside his boots, he flexed his toes. He took it as a good sign that he was still able to move them. He wished he wasn’t so unbearably hot. He felt like he was burning from the inside out.

His fingers stopped moving over the tongue of his boots. An image he had etched into his mind flashed before his eyes. It had been a hot week up on Brokeback, sometime after they had switched up the roles of herder and tender, but long before the unexpected snowfall that drove them off the mountain.

He closed his eyes and basked in the warmth of the memory.

After that first night, Ennis had spent nearly every night in camp with Jack, instead of heading back up to the sheep. What Aguirre didn’t know wouldn’t hurt him. Jack could not have imagined the summer would have turned out so different from the previous year or from the time he spent sleeping in a bunkroom full of rodeo cowboys. This summer was so much better. In no time at all, Jack could have Ennis hard and ready, shaking from the sensations that skittered through his body. He’d relish the feel of Ennis’s sweat soaked body as he draped himself over Jack’s back, his hard cock punching into him, his breath hot and filthy in his ear.

When he finally coaxed Ennis into letting him explore with his fingers and his mouth, their roles reversed again with the same dizzying result. As Jack’s cock slid deep, he watched Ennis’s eyes grow dark with desire, his lips kissed raw in the moonlight that played over the tent walls. Jack hooked an arm under Ennis’s knee and pressed forward until it rested at his elbow. He leaned down to kiss Ennis’s mouth again, panting into it as he thrusted, assuring Ennis with his words, “I’ve got you, Ennis. S’alright, you can let go.”

And Ennis did let go, coming apart piece by piece under Jack’s body, with Jack’s lips moving across his skin, Jack breathing wordlessly into his hair.

If only things could be like that again. Jack craved the feeling of what he and Ennis had, the connection that existed before Ennis ended it with that one punch. And now, for the first time in years, Jack felt like he could regain what they had lost, if only he could find Ennis again.

But Ennis was somewhere on this mountain, somewhere in the middle of the Colorado nowhere, and nothing was going to help Jack to reconnect with him if he couldn’t stop the unbearable heat that threatened to burn him alive.

“Ennis!” he screamed, but the word only came out like a rough whisper from a throat that was dry and hoarse.

Ennis.

If Ennis could find him.

Just this. If Ennis could find him now. Jack balled his hands into the snow.

If he could have this, he’d be able to put this whole situation behind him. He’d be able to put everything out of his head, his daddy, Vietnam, Davis Wentworth, the trouble with the chopper, Brian, the shit he was going to be in with Wayne, everything… everything would be all right if only Ennis could find him.

He touched his icy fingertips to his cheeks, hoping to cool his face.

He heard Ennis’s voice before he saw him.

“Jack?” Ennis asked, stepping closer on his snowshoes until he could squat in front of him.

“Ennis?” Jack looked up, afraid that he was seeing some kind of mountain mirage.

“Jack,” Ennis’s voice held the smile that was once so familiar to Jack.

“Oh, fuck,” Jack said with a laugh, clenching the snow with his bare hands. “Am I in heaven?”

Jack watched Ennis’s brown eyes shifting, playing over his face as if he was making some kind of important decision. And then it was done. Ennis didn’t make a sound. He moved closer and Jack closed his eyes as he felt the warmth of Ennis’s mouth on his cold chapped lips. His hands left the snow and wrapped around Ennis’s neck. He parted his lips ever so slightly to inhale, to breathe in Ennis’s almost-forgotten scent.

“Not quite,” Ennis said, sounding relieved when he pulled away. He reached behind his back to grab at something. Jack recognized it as his parka that he had dropped on his way down the ravine. Ennis yanked it from his pack and wrapped it around Jack’s shoulders.

“You’re hot ‘cause you’re freezing to death, dumbass,” Ennis said, as if Jack should have known better.

“I reckon so. You’d think I woulda known that by now,” Jack said.

“Well, just knowin’ something ain’t always enough to change the way you react to it,” Ennis said.

Jack nodded.

And then, Ennis was kissing him again. Jack wanted to tell him that he appreciated how therapeutic the kisses were, but he didn’t get the chance.

“He told me you was dead,” Ennis spoke against Jack’s lips. Ennis looked like he was squinting to fight back tears.

“Who did?” Jack asked, gathering his breath, forgetting the ache in his ribs.

“Your daddy,” Ennis said, wiping his eyes. “I went to see him in Lightning Flat, after you had gone.”

“Fuck,” Jack said.

“It’s alright,” Ennis said. “I know why he did it. It’s all gonna be alright now. You hang in there. Fuck, you’re cold.”

Ennis leaned back and took his pack off. He tugged off his mittens and unzipped his jacket.

“What’re you doin?” Jack asked as Ennis started unbuttoning his shirt. “You lost your mind to hypothermia too?”

“Naw,” Ennis said, helping Jack to shove his arms through the sleeves of his shirt. “I’m warmer than you are. Take my shirt and parka. They’re already warmed up. I’ll just wear yours the rest of the way down.”

Jack tried to suppress a grin, remembering another one of Ennis’s shirts that he had stowed away at his daddy’s house. Maybe it was time he got that piece of missing clothing back to its rightful owner. “Alma?” he asked, changing the direction his mind was taking him. “What happened?”

“Divorced,” Ennis said. He had buttoned his shirt over Jack’s chest and had zipped the parka into place.

Jack felt warmer already. Not the kind of warmth that burned him from the inside out, but the kind of warmth that began on skin level and sunk deeper with every minute.

“I’m sorry,” Jack said.

“Ain’t your fault,” Ennis said. But Jack noticed that Ennis kept his eyes locked with his for a very long time. He had to wonder whether Ennis was telling the whole truth about it. He supposed he’d find out what really happened later, when they weren’t both standing on a mountain slope freezing half to death.

“Ennis,” Jack said, shaking his head.

Ennis got to his feet and offered Jack a hand.

Jack groaned as Ennis pulled him upright. The ache in his ribs was starting to kick in again.

Ennis ran his hands down Jack’s arms from his shoulders to his wrists, catching Jack’s icy fingers in his warm ones. Jack leaned forward and pressed his forehead to Ennis’s, but their moment was interrupted by the sound of Jeff hollering as he made his way down the slope to them.

They quickly exchanged their greetings and regrets about Brian and the passing of David Wentworth when the rescue went awry. But they were burning daylight, so they talked as they walked, three men breaking a trail downhill. Before long, Wayne’s team arrived from below, having tramped a path for nearly a mile from the road. Jack was never so happy to see a boss, as he was to see Wayne at that moment. Their team had carried a rescue toboggan up the mountain and Ennis seemed to think that Jack was going to allow himself to be strapped in and carried to the road.

“Fuck no,” Jack said. He wasn’t going to let them strap him into that thing. Something hot to drink and a couple of painkillers were all he’d need to hike the rest of the way out, busted ribs be damned.

~~~

Dating again. The mere notion of it seemed ridiculous to Alma.

The girls had been settled in their bedrooms upstairs, and K.E. and Laurie had turned out their light for the evening. The house was silent, except for the gentle ticking of the clock that hung on the kitchen wall. Alma went to the bathroom and washed her face, drying her hands on a guest towel. She favored routine above all things and so she descended to the rumpus room for the night, uncertain of how her stay at the Del Mars would play into the remaining chapters of her life, especially if Laurie was so bold as to suggest that she date again.

She shuddered at the memory of their conversation. Laurie had made it sound like dating was something Alma could easily choose to do, as if she would pursue a boy who just fell out of the sky.

There was no such choice for Alma. Why couldn’t Laurie understand that?

Alma had made her decision years ago when she chose Ennis Del Mar for a spouse _‘til death did them part._ Beyond that assertion, there was nothing.

Alma dug a nightgown out of a cardboard box and tossed it onto the daybed. She unzipped her skirt and slid it to her feet.

She could no more begin to look for another man to marry than she could have hope of receiving a pardon for her sin from the pope himself. Unbuttoning her blouse, her chest tightened with the memories of the life she had hoped to build with Ennis. Her marriage had held so much promise for her. She and Ennis had their whole future ahead of them, until he divorced her after he defiled her by touching their parts together. Now she was ruined, used. No other man would want her, and if he did, it would be with the understanding that she had already engaged in the pleasures of the flesh, the acts that Alma had considered to be a sin for so long that it was inconceivable for her to believe otherwise. Any man she could attract now would be interested in getting one thing, and one thing only, from her. She’d be considered a heathen in the eyes of anyone with a decent set of morals. A sinner to anyone who abided by the word of God. A transgressor in the eyes of her mother, a miscreant condemned to hell at the tip of Archangel Michael’s spear.

Alma bit down on her lower lip. She removed her stockings and slid her feet into the pair of slippers she had left beneath the daybed.

She gave up everything of herself for Ennis, all that she believed. She let him touch her in that way, but then he wanted nothing to do with her.

She cringed when she remembered that Ennis had suggested that they visit some kind of head doctor to discuss what happened in the privacy of their bedroom. As if she could ever bring herself to discuss that forbidden area _down below_ with anyone. Despite their attempts to copulate, something that would get Alma pregnant with a child and delight Alma’s mother to no end, Alma still felt dirty and squeamish when she thought about that sinful part of her body.

She’d never think about it again. She took her chance and look where it got her—shedding tears of fury over every belief she abandoned so that Ennis could have his way with her.

She let him touch her. She allowed his naked flesh to make contact with the forbidden part of her. The part that she’d go to hell for touching.

Alma gave a little sigh when she remembered how frustrated Ennis had become. He tried to insert his penis into her, but he failed every time. Who knew if further action needed to be taken beyond the insertion, but the insertion itself was paramount to the sperm being deposited. What happened before, after, or during that, she’d never know.

Still, she missed Ennis, even now, after so many years had passed. He was her savior, her ticket out of her parents’ house, her validation. Her husband. Even during the days and weeks and months that Alma and Ennis had tried to consummate their marriage, Alma still considered herself lucky to have found Ennis. Lucky that she had found someone who would agree to marry her on the promise of a fumbled kiss and assurance of fidelity. She’d not get that chance again.

Alma slipped off the blouse, her bra, and pulled the nightgown over her head. She tossed her dirty clothes into the corner of the room and in the dim light, a shiny object caught her eye. She leaned to peer into the box that contained the item.

“Oh,” she mumbled as she reached for it. It was Ennis’s lighter, the one that he left behind when he moved out of the apartment Alma and he had rented when they were newlyweds, the apartment where their struggle to join their bodies had taken place.

Alma spun the wheel with her thumb and the flame flared up. She was surprised that it still worked.

She watched the flame as it made her thumb burn hot. It saddened her that no matter what she did, no one would ever want her, not after what she had done with Ennis.

No matter how she longed for the iconic Prince Charming of Riverton to sweep her off her feet, he was unattainable, and always would be. No worthwhile prince would ever want her now. To Alma, it was as if she had been raped. Certainly she had given her consent to be defiled through marriage, but Ennis had failed to meet her expectations. He not only failed, but in doing so, he had forced her to violate her steadfast beliefs, and it was all for nothing. She had sworn to remain chaste, until she found someone to marry her and engage in the very act that had been forbidden for so long. The act would ensure the approval of her mother, her father, it would seal her worth in the eyes and minds of society. But something went wrong. There was no way of turning back time now.

Alma knew what she needed to do.

She rummaged through the same box that had held her nightgown and pulled out a light bathrobe, blue flowers on a cream background, still smelling faintly of the smoke damage that had ravaged her apartment above the Laundromat. Shoving her arms through the sleeves, she donned the robe and slid the lighter into the pocket.

Quietly, so she wouldn’t disturb anyone’s sleep, she ascended the stairs and emerged into the kitchen. The glow from the LCD display illuminated the stovetop in a wash of red.

She went to the doorway that led to the garage. Looking around the kitchen, to make sure her movements were not detected, she slipped out the door.

In the garage, she found what she was looking for. She lifted the red can with one hand while she slowly turned the knob of the door with her other hand, careful to not make a sound. Certain that no one had heard her make her escape, she listened for the door to latch shut again. The click of the lock seemed to echo through the neighborhood in the night air.

In her slippers, she walked along the sidewalk, passing K.E. and Laurie’s house, the next door neighbor’s house, and the houses beyond. The neighborhood was quiet at this hour of the night. No lights illuminated the rooms within the houses, where during the day children fussed and families gathered. They only dreamed now, asleep until morning. Alma regretted that so many of her dreams had been unfulfilled. She had no pretty house to call her home, no loving parents to visit, no baby at her breast.

There had been choices to make.

Ennis had made his, and now it was her turn.

Her footsteps moved quietly on the concrete sidewalk, scuffing a stray pebble every now and then. She passed the houses and the trees and the dim city lights until she reached the park at the end of the street.

The swings hung motionless on this windless night. The slide shone when it caught a glint of the streetlamp’s glare.

Alma slipped onto the seat of a swing, the splintered wood hard and rough against her thin nightgown and robe. She unscrewed the cap on the metallic can, removed it, and let it drop to the ground. It rolled a few inches away from her feet before it stopped.

Alma raised the can over her head and tilted it, letting the pungent liquid wash over her, soaking her robe and nightgown, chilling her skin, saturating her hair.

Alma had accepted her fate, although it stung to think that nobody would know the value of her lost innocence when she was gone. Just as no one would know the weight of Ennis’s decision to strip himself of the protective shield he had set between himself and others. No one would recognize its absence or the steep price he paid when he made amends with Jack.

The community that had accepted the responsibility for nurturing both Ennis and Alma so they lived fulfilling lives had failed. Their benign intentions to support Ennis in becoming a man, a husband, a father, had seemed noble. Alma’s mother’s well-meaning efforts to teach Alma how to be a good wife, hadn’t been deemed misguided or damaging by her peers. Yet these societal conventions worked like a glacier moving across the land, devastating Ennis and Alma’s innocent souls, smoothing and scouring the features that made them remarkable and different.

Alma took Ennis’s lighter from her pocket and spun the wheel.

They say your whole life flashes before your eyes when you are confronted with imminent death.

As the flames consumed her, Alma’s shoulders relaxed, finally releasing the tension from her chest and slowing the beat of her heart. She felt the heat melt her spirit. It seemed to seep out from between her ribs while Archangel Michael’s spear stabbed into her skin until she was finally set free.

The End

**Author's Note:**

> “Calling Me Back to the Hills” was written by Earl Shaffer, poet and friend.
> 
> My deepest thanks to morrobay1990 and lawgoddess for the beta, and soulan for geographic research.


End file.
